


Body or Soul: The Adventures of Kit and Jeremy

by nagi_schwarz



Category: Weiss Kreuz, X-Men (Movies)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-10
Updated: 2008-03-10
Packaged: 2018-05-26 06:41:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 45,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6227926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Logan and Scott have swapped bodies. But not with each other. Roadtrip and slashiness and combat ensue as they try to set things to right.</p><p>Originally written for the LJ scott-Logan ficathon on the scott_logan comm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Mish-mash of Movie and Ultimate-verse. Post X3. Beta by hell_is_bloody.

Scott came awake sharply and sat bolt upright. He reached for his glasses on the night stand, and his hand hit flesh instead.

Someone was in bed with him.

Scott felt his flesh began to crawl. He wouldn't do that, couldn't have done that, gotten drunk and betrayed Jean's memory.

The other person grunted, and there was a rustling of sheets as the body rolled over.

Scott's heart leapt into his throat.

He was in bed with another man.

What had he drunk last night? Nothing too harmless - just a little sambuca.

Maybe some real sambuca with hash in it.

Scott clutched his forehead and winced. He had to find his glasses. Then he had to figure out where the hell he was and how to get back to the school. Last he had checked, he and some of the other teachers had decided - foolishly - to let loose for Remy's birthday with some booze, so maybe Scott was just in someone else's room.

Whose?

If he reached out, he would be able to tell which of his comrades he had -- which of his comrades had fallen asleep beside him. Wings and it was Warren, tail and it was Kurt, fur and it was Hank, no fur and it was Remy.

Claws and it was Logan.

Scott remembered sprawling out in the corner with a mostly-empty bottle of sambuca in one hand and Logan coming to stand over him, to taunt him. It had been more friendly snark than anything, Scott too serenely drunk to really rouse himself for a proper argument, but the last person he remembered was Logan.

Scott shook his head.

No - that was months ago. Years ago, maybe.

The last thing Scott remembered of Logan was arguing with him in the upstairs hallway before heading for his motorcycle to begin his pilgrimage to Alkali Lake.

After that everything was - shades of red and black.

No different from what Scott usually saw.

Where the hell was he?

On an impulse, he reached out and prodded the person next to him.

Another deep, chest-rumbling grunt from the person beside him.

Definitely male.

Time for a sit-rep. Scott had woken up in a strange place beside a strange male stripped of his glasses. So far this didn't seem like capture, but until he found glasses he was effectively blind.

This could be some new disorientation technique.

He eased himself off of the bed, hands out to steady him and check for obstacles. Even though Scott had had the luxury of the ruby quartz glasses for over a decade, he had kept up the skills he'd learnt while blind on the streets as a teen.

Scott made it about two feet before he crashed into a seat - or maybe a love seat or a couch - and landed on top of another person.

Who let out a rather feminine yelp.

Two hands planted themselves against his chest and shoved roughly.

"Kit! Watch where you're going," she grumbled, though she was too drowsy for her words to hold any real malice.

Scott caught himself on the arm of the sofa/love seat and managed to stay on his feet.

"Did you just call me kid?" he asked.

He gulped. His voice was unnaturally high, as if he was suddenly a tenor where he had always been a baritone. Or he were suddenly a teenager again.

"Kit," the girl said, and she sounded more awake. "Christopher. Why are your eyes shut, you goof? No wonder you tripped over the entire love seat."

Scott curled his hands into fists. "My name isn't Christopher."

The girl laughed, though the sound turned into a yawn midway through. "Wow, you must have been really smashed last night. Hard to tell with you, though."

Scott lurched away from her.

"Kit?" Alarm laced her voice.

There was another grunt from the bed, followed by a man's rumble of, "Shut up. 'M tryin' a' sleep."

"I'm not your friend," Scott said. This had to be some sort of joke. "I don't know who you are." He rose up on his feet. "Stryker - Magneto - Worthington - whoever you are, you'll never get away with this."

Bedsprings shrieked as someone else shot awake.

"Stryker?"

Scott didn't know the voice, but the tense not-quite-panic he heard was genuine alarm.

The girl remained unalarmed. "Very funny, boys." She yawned again. "That was quite the wake-up. Usually you wake up much more slowly. Considering how much everclear you had last night, I'm surprised you didn't puke as soon as you moved your head."

"Who are you talking to?" Scott asked.

"Not you," the girl said. "If your eyes were open, you'd know I was talking to the other you."

"Me?" the other boy asked.

"Yes, Jeremy, you."

Jeremy's response was an immediate, "What the hell is going on here?"

"Keep it down," the girl said. "You'll wake the others. As much as Alexis says she never gets hung over, her solution to Kit's attempts at drinking all the Bacardi 151 was to drink it all herself instead, so she's probably going to be extremely moody when she has to get up for work. Which is not for another couple of hours. So let her sleep."

Scott flinched when she prodded him in the ribs with a toe.

"And for heaven's sake, open your eyes."

He shook his head, eyes squeezed tightly shut. "No. Not until you give me my glasses."

"Glasses? Please. Only the girls are here are four-eyed nerds."

Jeremy spoke with a low growl. "Who are you, where the hell am I, and what is going on?"

The girl's voice was tight with irritation. "Enough with the antics. I'm going to get some hangover remedy and water, and when I get back you two better have quit it."

The voice was unfamiliar, but Scott had a sudden sinking sensation. "Logan?"

"How did you know my name? Who are you?"

"It's me, Scott," he said softly.

The only reply was a choke. "That's a lie. Scott is dead. The Phoenix killed him."

"The Phoenix?" Scott echoed weakly, because his lips couldn't form the real question he wanted to ask. I'm dead? "I'm not dead. I - all I remember is Jean and the lake and opening my eyes - really opening them - for the first time in. Years. And then everything went - black. And red."

"You're not Scott," Jeremy said again. "You're just a kid."

"And you don't sound like Logan."

"Don't mess with me, Bub. I know exactly who I am."

Scott wanted to choke back a laugh at the familiar nickname. "And I know who I am. What's the last thing you remember?"

"Sending students to bed."

Scott swallowed hard. "How long has it been - since the lake?"

"Nearly a year," Logan said in Jeremy's strange voice.

Scott's breath caught in his chest.

"Are you quite done?" the girl demanded. She was standing behind Scott. He had barely heard her approach.

"If you want the hangover juice, open your eyes. I'm sick of this damn game."

Scott shook his head. "I can't."

"Where's the bathroom?" Logan/Jeremy asked.

"You should know by now," the girl said coolly.

"Don't remember," Logan grunted.

"That way."

And Scott heard him shuffle away.

"Open your eyes, Kit, and drink the damned concoction already."

As if her words had brought on the hangover, Scott felt his head begin to pound. Still he shook his head, eyes squeezed tightly shut.

"You don't understand. I'm not who you think I am, and if I open my eyes --"

Someone swore in Japanese in another room.

"What's wrong?" the girl asked, and her voice dipped slightly in volume as if she had turned away.

Footsteps reentered the room.

"Scott, open your eyes."

He shook his head.

"Do it. It'll be all right." Jeremy's - Logan's - voice was near. "I swear. Just do it."

Scott squeezed his eyes shut tighter. "Logan, you know the danger. If I open my eyes unprotected--"

"Slim," Logan said in a low voice. "Trust me."

And Scott did. He might have mistrusted Logan's emotions towards Jean and the X-Men, but he could trust Logan with his life and the lives of others.

When he opened his eyes nothing happened.

Except that he could see color.

His breath caught in his chest again, but for an entirely different reason. The room before him was shabby - an old couch, a scrappy fold-out bed, messy blankets, papers and food strewn across every available surface. But it was amazing - blankets in blue and green and yellow, wood furniture in brown and right, pens and bottles in red and purple and shining silver.

"Scott."

He turned to the source of the voice - and could only stare again.

The person before him wasn't Logan but a boy, maybe twenty years old at best, with chin-length dark hair and sloe-black eyes. He wore a blue Superman t-shirt and jeans.

"What happened?" he asked.

The stranger shook his head. "No clue, bub." Even if he didn't sound like Logan, he still spoke with the other man's bluntness. "I looked in the mirror and the bathroom, and -- this. You should see yourself. You're young and blond. You'd put Iceman to shame with your pretty face."

"This is getting old, and fast."

Scott turned. The girl who was gazing at him with something akin to bored annoyance on her face was young, also probably in her twenties, with glorious dark skin and a red dot in the middle of her forehead.

She held out a glass of a mustard-colored concoction. "Drink and maybe your grandmother won't catch that you're hung over."

Scott sighed. "Listen, you're going to find this utterly difficult to believe, but --"

"Drink." The girl thrust the glasses at him, and if Scott hadn't taken them the foul yellow brew would have ended up all over his shirt. She spun on her heel and vanished around the corner into the kitchen. When she returned, it was with another glass of the yellow brew for Logan.

Scott studied the other person as he drank. It tasted foul, but the pounding in his head seemed to subside as soon as the juice hit his system. Logan's new body was young and soft, rounded in the middle as if the boy didn't exercise much. He was strong-looking, that was sure, but Logan's animal-tense poise didn't match the husky frame.

Scott wondered if he dared to look in the mirror. His mind spun almost too fast for him to keep up. One moment he was looking at Jean, and then that interminable darkness, which had apparently lasted for a year, and then...this.

Waking up in bed with a new body.

A thought struck him, and horror curled in his belly, threatening to upset what he'd just drunk.  
What if he had a new body because his old one was dead?

Logan frowned. "Scott?"

"Why do you keep calling him that?" the girl demanded.

"It's his name," Logan said.

The girl's eyes narrowed, and she studied them both. They looked back at her, ready to fend off her next round of angry words, but then she shrugged. "Fine. He's Scott. And you are?"

"Logan."

"What's your name?" Scott asked. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand like a heathen.

"Emily." She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the wall, continuing to study them with hard, dark eyes. Finally, she said to Scott, "You look concerned. Something wrong?"

He shook his head. "Nothing for you to be concerned about."

"And if I were Gina, would you tell me then?"

Scott looked at her blankly, unaware of anyone named Gina. This prompted a sigh. Emily turned away again, leaving the two men to their own devices.

Logan gestured for the door. Scott set his glass down on the coffee table and then followed Logan out of the apartment.

They headed up some stairs and out into a sunny morning. The leaves were turning yellow and red, and the sky was a lovely shade of blue. Scott would have lost himself in all the wonderful colors if Logan hadn't spoken.

"It goes like this," Logan said, darting a wary glance at their surroundings. "We have to figure out where we are and how to get back to the school so we can fix this."

"What if there's nothing to fix?"

Logan frowned. "I'm stuck in the body of a child. Of course there's something to fix!"

"For you." Scott turned away and studied the bright garden across the street. Purple pansies and blue forget-me-nots peeked out from behind verdant leaves. "Maybe this is it for me. I'm here because my body is dead."

Logan set his jaw stubbornly. Out of the corner of his eye, Scott could see that, somehow, the oh-so-Wolverine expression worked on the boy's face.

"Don't say shit like that, Cyke. Where's the team leader now? I needed one of your genius plans an hour ago."

"We were unconscious an hour ago."

"Exactly."

Scott looked down at his body. It seemed so much more frail than his body even though he knew it wasn't. It just wasn't his body, the one he could trust in battle.

He sighed. "Even if there's no way to fix this, we have to get back to Westchester. Whoever had that body you're in now probably has your body as we speak and is probably freaking out about the adamantium claws that come out of his hands." Scott ran a hand through his hair. "Let's go inside and talk to Emily. See if she'll help us out."

Logan nodded. "If she stops being mad at us first, that is."

They turned and walked back into the house. Scott cast a final glance at the blue sky before he closed the door.

They found Emily cleaning up the den. She had folded away the couch bed by herself and was clearing away empty bottles, cups, and food wrappers.

"Need any help?" he asked.

She shot him a look. "No, but thank you."

"This is going to sound weird, but where are we?" Logan asked.

"In the basement apartment where Mary and Alexis live." Emily tossed the garbage into the trash can and set about folding blankets.

Her voice was tight with leashed anger. Scott could understand why she was so angry. If someone like Hank or Storm had woken up one day and started to pretend to be someone else, it would have annoyed him. Living with mutants, however, had taught him to suspend his disbelief more easily. If Jean could read minds, who was to say she couldn't switch them as well?

"I meant, as in 'where in the world,'" Logan said.

Scott spoke up. "You speak English with an American accent, and you didn't seem surprised that we had American accents, so to assume that we're in America wouldn't be a bad stretch, would it?"

"You're in Utah. Southwestern corner, in the mountains. Place called Cedarville. Won't find it a lot of maps." Emily set the blankets in the corner and tugged a large duffel bag over to the sofa. She began tossing in clothes and CD's haphazardly. After a moment, Scott realized she was packing her own belongings.

"Anything else you'd like to know?"

"Do either of us have a car?" Scott asked.

"Jeremy has a gas-guzzling truck. Your grandmother lets you drive the car to work and nowhere else." Emily reached down and felt around under the sofa. She sat up, and Scott recoiled a step when she held up a katana. She drew it slightly, checking it, then sheathed it again and set it down. Her motions were sharp with anger. A glance at Logan showed that the man was watching her, ready for anything.

"Can you actually use that?" Logan asked.

"It's not mine," Emily said shortly. "It's yours. Thought you might not want to lose it."

Logan could use a katana, and so could his body-switching counterpart. Was that a coincidence?

Scott eased forward a step. "Did either of us ever tell you that we were...possibly...mutants?" If it wasn't a coincidence, then perhaps this Jeremy person had deliberately switched bodies for another that was stronger and already had kenjutsu in its muscle memory. If he was a mutant, then Logan and Scott were in for quite a fight.

"You'd never tell me that sort of thing even if you were." Emily zipped her bag up and rose to her feet. "Tell Mary and the others I'm not staying tonight after all."

"Why are you so angry?" Logan asked.

Emily headed past him and for the door.

Scott reached out and caught her wrist. "Hey, we were talking to you --"

Emily spun, dark eyes flashing. "I know it's your common story that you don't remember shit after a night of heavy drinking, and I might even have thought that you'd take it this far." She cast her glare upon Logan. "But I thought you were decent enough not to join in. So I'm leaving. Play your games with the others." She tugged free from Scott and started for the door.

Behind Logan, another door banged open.

Another dark-haired girl stumbled out of her bedroom, rubbing her eyes tiredly. She spotted the scene in the hallway and squinted a bit. "What's going on?"

"Kit doesn't love me and he's being an asshole about it," Emily said flatly.

Scott flinched when the other girl snapped awake and fixed a glare on him. "What?"

Scott looked at Logan. The other boy looked just as confused. He made a gesture as if to say, "Your call."

"Er, yeah," Scott said. "I am an asshole."

Logan chuckled. "You got that right."

That didn't seem to alleviate the tension in the room. In fact, that seemed to make it worse.

"Em," the other girl began, but Emily shook her head.

"I'm going home. Maybe asshole and accomplice will be done when I come up again next week. Till then, I have work to do." Emily strode out of the apartment and closed the door behind her, and the other three listened to her footsteps thunder up the stairs.

Then Scott found himself on the receiving end of two sets of glares.

"Listen, I know this is a bad time, but you have to believe us --" he started.

"Go after her."

Scott stared.

The girl lifted one hand and pointed at the door.

Logan made a shooing motion. Scott shot him a glare, annoyed that he was taking punishment even though they were equally oblivious to the circumstances into which they'd been dropped. He turned and headed up the stairs anyway.

Emily was halfway down the block, and Scott had to trot to catch up to her. This new body wasn't quite as tall as his real one.

"Emily," he said.

She kept walking.

"Emily, I'm sorry."

"For what?"

Scott floundered. "For - landing on you this morning."

"Say it, Kit."

"Um..."

"You're not sorry for it if you can't even admit what it was." Emily kept staring straight ahead, jaw tight.

"I'm sorry if I hurt you," Scott said finally.

"So you admit it hurt me. Hmmm." Her tone turned sarcastic.

"I didn't mean to."

She spun around on the spot. "Didn't mean to? How can you not mean to completely pretend not to remember a girl telling you she loves you the night before?"

Scott felt panic bubble in his chest. Love? She was in love with the person whose body he had taken? "I honestly don't remember it."

"Then why the hell are you apologizing?"

"You seemed angry."

"You're observant." Emily began walking again, faster.

This was ridiculous. Scott and Logan had to get back to the school. If this was some Brotherhood trick, if someone had taken Wolverine's body - all of his students were in danger.

Students who thought he had died a year ago.

He leapt in front of her, forcing her to stop.

"I don't remember last night because I'm not your friend. My name is Scott Summers and a year ago I died. Then I woke up in your apartment in this strange body. Whoever you think I am - I'm not him. I'm just in his body."

"You expect me to believe that?"

"I do. Ask me something, anything, and my answer should prove what I say."

"What level is your WoW ice mage?"

Scott blinked at her. "What?"

"What month is your birthday?"

"September."

"You could have lied on the spot." Emily was still staring at him with those hard eyes. "What is your middle name?"

"Don't have one."

"Again, you could have lied."

Scott was ready to tear his hair out. "Anything I say to you could be called a lie."

"Fine." Emily studied his face. "When are you doing to die?"

Scott rolled his eyes. "I don't know. When I'm old?"

Something in her face changed. "You really aren't him." She turned away.

Scott frowned. "So you finally believe me. So are you going to help us?"

"Us?"

"Logan and I. Logan - he's in your friend Jeremy's body. We - we need to get to New York."

"City?"

"The state. I don't know how much money we have, or if we can pull this off without ruining your friends' lives, but we have to get back to our own bodies."

"You said you died a year ago."

"Apparently not."

"How do you know you even have a body to go back to?"

"I don't. But Logan has to get back to his body. And I'm sure your friend will be wanting his body back." Scott darted a glance over his shoulder. He didn't want to have this conversation out in the open. If this was some sort of plot, he needed cover and a weapon.

"Kit was dying. Doctors had given him five years about four years ago. Maybe he's dead and you just - took his place." Emily's hand tightened on the strap of her bag, but she didn't look at him.  
Her words were like a blow to the chest. Scott staggered back a step. No. That was impossible. This wasn't possible.

Emily must have heard him began to pant in panic, for she turned and smiled at him. It wasn't much of a smile, worn around the edges, eyes full of despair.

"Hopefully Logan and Jeremy can both get home. Come on."

Scott followed her back along the sidewalk toward the apartment. Her pace was just as rapid as before, and Scott wondered if it was a short girl thing.

Without his mutation, Scott didn't have the same visual reflexes as he normally did, so Emily caught him by surprise.

She spun around and pinned him up against the wall, one arm across his throat, the tip of a dagger pressed to his jugular.

Scott blinked, barely daring to breathe. He recognized the dagger's ornate hilt. Moments before it had been twisted up in Emily's hair.

"You and Logan - you're mutants. How do I know you didn't do this to my friends on purpose? Mutants can do things beyond imagination. Maybe you took their bodies."

"No," Scott said. "We're not Brotherhood - we don't try to hurt humans."

"Maybe you don't," Emily hissed, "but you're willing to trample on us to get what you need anyway."

Scott closed his eyes. "What can I possibly say to you to make you believe that we're not out to hurt you? We just need to get our bodies back before things go wrong."

"What are your mutations?"

"Optic blasts. I shoot solar-powered blasts out of my eyes when I open them." Scott studied her face and saw wary recognition there. "And Logan - he can't die. And he has giant metal claws in his hands."

Emily's eyebrows went up. "I see. If you destroy things when your eyes are open, how do you survive?"

Scott swallowed hard. Jean had barely known about his past. "I was blind for years. And then someone - another mutant - found a material to make glasses out of so I could see."

"Glasses?"

"They look like red shades."

Emily's grip on the dagger didn't waver. "So you've been blind or color-blind for...how long?"

"Thirteen years," Scott said. "I manifested when I was fourteen."

Emily stepped back and slid the dagger back into her hair. When she turned her head, Scott saw that her thick black hair was tied up in a complicated series of swirls and braids. It was elegant and showed off the long, graceful line of her neck, but he was suspicious of the other pretty jewels gleaming among the black strands.

"I'm inclined to trust you," Emily said. "Don't make me doubt my instincts." She scooped up her bag and continued walking.

Scott reached up to rub his sore throat and followed at a safe distance.

The scene they came upon was amusing, to say the least.

Logan was seated on the sofa holding a black handheld device - a Nintendo DS, which Scott recognized because of Kitty. His face was blank but his eyes were terrified as he prodded at the buttons, wincing every time something went wrong on the screen.

A girl sat on either side of him. One was a sultry blonde in a low-cut shirt who was leaning on Logan's arm. The other girl, a curvy brunette, sat a slightly more circumspect distance away, but was eyeing Logan with all-too-obvious interest.

She looked up in surprise when Emily strode into the apartment without so much as knocking.

"Em! Mary said you'd left, that you'd gotten into a fight with Kit..."

She trailed off when Scott stepped into the apartment and politely closed the door.

Scott beckoned with one hand. "We need to talk."

The blonde threw her head back and laughed, exposing more of her cleavage than Scott was appropriate for a girl that age. Then again, he was thinking like a twenty-seven-year-old school teacher. Whichever teenaged boy had been in this body previously probably enjoyed the free flashes of skin.

Logan's jaw tightened as if he wanted to glare, but then he stood up, grateful to escape the awful situation.

Scott turned and headed back up the stairs, taking Logan with him.

"I think she's on our side," he said.

Logan nodded. "Okay. Great way to talk fast. So what's the plan?"

"Road trip."

Logan's eyebrows went up. "Explain."

Scott took a deep breath. He knew that Logan trusted his judgment as team leader, but in such an utterly foreign situation and without his mutation-based skills Scott wasn't sure how much of his tactical skills would be diminished.

"Emily suspects that Jeremy and Kit might have been mutants and that this body-switch might have been conscious on their part. Assuming they're not high-level telepaths, we need the element of surprise."

"But a road trip?"

"It'll give us time to test the limits and capabilities of these bodies."

Logan thought this through. "Fine. But I get to drive."

Scott snorted. "Hardly. Remember who pilots the Blackbird?"

"Storm."

"So...how are we going to convince these boys' parents to just let us go?"

"Best I could glean from Emily, Kit lives with his grandmother. Maybe she's a little senile."

"We'll have to talk to her alone, then," Logan said.

"Not liking the others girls' company?" Scott asked, tone dry.

Logan just arched an eyebrow. Then he sighed. "I want a cigar."

"Not your body. You don't get to poison it."


	2. Chapter 2

Having Emily as an ally was unbelievably useful. She made excuses for the two men that they didn't really understand and then shooed them out of the apartment. She caught Logan in a hug in the middle of the doorway, and Scott lingered on the bottom step, watching. Logan went rigid in her embrace, eyes wide in horror, but she pulled back quickly. She had slipped a folded piece of paper into Logan's back pocket mid-embrace, and she shot Scott a look before she vanished back into the apartment.  
  
"What the hell was that all about?" Logan grumbled, dusting off his shirt with one hand as if it would somehow wipe away the lingering sensation of a sudden hug.  
  
Scott headed up the stairs. "She slipped you some information. And she gave me the keys to our respective cars. Check your data, and then let's go."  
  
Logan patted down his pockets, and his eyes narrowed when he realized that Emily had indeed gotten the drop on him. He unfolded the paper, then grunted. Scott knew that sound, one of grudging approval.  
  
"She left us directions to our own houses, our work schedules, and her cell phone number."  
  
Scott leaned in to peer at the paper. Neat cursive filled the page. "She has all that information? Impressive."  
  
"They must be close friends." Logan refolded the paper and slipped it into his pocket. "Let's go to your place. It's closer. We can plan then."  
  
Scott nodded and headed over to the strange car. It started easily enough, and he had to trust his memory of the directions to take him where he ought to go.  
  
Kit lived only a few blocks south of the girls' apartment in the basement of his grandmother's house. It was small and white with a picket fence and a postage stamp of a lawn, but the neighborhood looked decent enough.  
  
He waited outside until he saw Logan pull up in Jeremy's massive black pick-up truck, and then they braved the basement together.  
  
It was definitely the abode of a teenaged boy, or a young man several years their junior, because the place was a horrific mess, littered with junk food wrappers, empty Mountain Dew cans...and several half-finished pieces of chain-mail armor. Scott blinked and carefully picked his way across the chaos to the sofa. This was someone else's home, someone else's life, and he didn't want to mess it up. Hopefully whoever was on the other end of this hellish exchange would care to extend the same courtesy.  
  
Logan took up a post in the kitchenette so he could see the door and most of the windows. It was a decent-sized basement with a small sitting room, kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom.  
  
"Okay. What's the plan, Slim?"  
  
"We run an asset check on these boys. Call in sick to work. Emily said that - that Kit, the boy whose body I've taken, is ill often. Maybe we can play on that. Then we hit the road." Scott reached up to run a hand through his hair and flinched when the hair he touched wasn't his. It had a different texture, a different thickness. He swallowed and placed his hands carefully on his knees. "Seems like Kit is plenty in touch with technology."  
  
Logan flicked a glance at the complicated set-up in the corner, a mass of wires and towers and monitors that threatened to come alive and spring the Matrix on them at any moment.  
  
"We do some internet recon and scout ahead, see what's going on at the school. Plan our approach from there. See if we can get in touch with Dr. McTaggert. Maybe she's heard of this or knows a telepath who could reverse it."  
  
Scott let his words hang in the air while Logan considered.  
  
"Fine. Until then, we have to convince the rest of the girls that we're their friends."  
  


***

  
  
It took Scott ten minutes to figure out how to turn on Kit's monster computing machine, during which time Logan rifled through the cupboards in search of proper food.  
  
"That Emily girl says her little buddy is sick all the time, huh?" Logan reached into the depths of a wooden cupboard, grimaced, and withdrew a rotten Twinkie. "This may be why."  
  
Scott made a sound of noncommittal agreement and continued trawling through the wires. Where was the damned tower? He was sure that even if he did get the computer on it would be pointless because the thing would probably be encrypted to the high heavens and beyond. If only he could talk to Kitty Pryde.  
  
A crash and a yelp alerted both men to an intruder in the bedroom. Logan scooped up the katana and unsheathed it. He glanced at Scott, who nodded and stood up. He scooped up the nearest weapon - a cast-iron frying pan - and moved to cover Logan.  
  
They crossed the den noiselessly. Whoever was in the bedroom was making little to no effort at concealing her presence. And it was a girl, for she was muttering and grumbling.  
  
Logan opened the door and twitched the katana up, level and ready to kill.  
  
Emily was on the bed in a heap. She was tangled in a mind-boggling length of cloth, part of which was lodged in the half-open window through which she must have tumbled. Scott was dazzled by the cloth's colour - it was yellow and lavender and green all at once, and gold thread and sequins glimmered in the sunlight that spilled through the window.   
  
Logan said, "What the hell?"  
  
Emily tugged ineffectually at the cloth. It was taut around her waist and across her throat, and she was stuck.  
  
"Help?"  
  
The katana wavered slightly. Then Logan stepped forward and poised the katana to slash the fabric. Emily's eyes went huge, and she cried out. Scott sighed and batted Logan aside with the pan. Logan yelped, surprised at the pain, and rubbed his arm.  
  
"Dammit, Slim, that hurt."  
  
Scott winced. "Sorry. It's just - your usual body --"  
  
Emily sighed. "I didn't have time to change before I escaped my dad's party. How about you untangle me now?"  
Scott nodded and reached out, running his fingers reverently over the lovely cloth. Then he climbed onto the bed and worked the cloth free of the window. Logan sheathed his katana and watched the proceedings warily. As soon as the cloth was free, Emily wrapped it around herself, twitched it into a series of pleats, and then she was wearing what Scott recognized as a sari.  
  
She was Indian. The red dot on her forehead looked less out of place now.  
  
"You guys are going to need my help."  
  
Logan shook his head. "No civilians."  
  
Emily said, "You managed to turn on the computer yet?"  
  
Scott shook his head. Logan cast him a look. The man lived up to his Wolverine reputation too much; he was always determined to do things without help.  
  
"Kit and Jeremy are my friends. I want them back as much as you want your bodies back." Emily swept past them and into the main room, picking her way through the medieval clutter with calm familiarity. Then she reached down, batted aside a tangle of wires, and thrust her hand into the shadows. Scott and Logan drifted after her, and they hung back, watching LEDs come to life, drivers whirring their awakening. From amidst the morass of electronic flotsam, Emily picked up a keyboard. She typed in what must have been the security password.   
  
"Where's the screen?" Logan whispered.  
  
He must not have whispered it quietly enough, for Emily lifted one hand and pointed. One bare wall - white-washed and oddly spotless, compared to the rest of the place - flickered with the giant projection from a screen. A quick glance around the room confirmed that Kit had performed some minor acrobatics to install speakers high up in all the corners.   
  
"All yours," Emily said. A little apologetically, she said, "I have all of Kit's financial information, but none of Jeremy's, so...Logan...you're kind of out of luck."  
  
Scott sat down on the sofa beside her and took the keyboard. "Thanks." He scanned the wall for the Internet Explorer icon, found Firefox instead, and set about hunting down the school's web page. He might have been in another body, but only he still had the school's network admin passwords.  
  
Logan went back to the kitchen to poke through the cupboards some more. "Why would you have some other guy's financial information? Are you his wife or something?"  
  
"What makes you think I'm his wife?" Emily reached into the refrigerator for a carton of orange juice and took a swig.  
  
"Red dot on your forehead. Means you're married." Logan flashed her an unsettling grin. Out of the corner of his eye, Scott noted that the expression worked on Jeremy's face too well for comfort.  
  
Emily shook her head. "Not red, dark orange. For a wedding. My sister's wedding. And, if you missed the dramatic tiff, Kit doesn't really give a damn about me." She replaced the orange juice. "No - Kit gave me power of attorney over his assets should he die."  
  
Logan cast Scott an assessing glance. "Does he have some sort of suicidal hobby? That pretty face Scott's hiding behind doesn't look older than twenty one."  
  
Emily rattled off an unrepeatable greek-sounding medical condition.  
  
Logan blinked.  
  
Scott ducked his head and concentrated on his search; Logan hated being caught off guard like this. The man would be the first to admit that he wasn't book-smart, but sometimes Jean had used her intellect to stave Logan off, and it usually worked.  
  
Emily sat down on the other end of the sofa and picked up a notebook. She wrote, ignoring Logan.  
  
He wanted answers. "Is that some sort of disease?"  
  
"Yes. A terminal illness, if you will. Kit may not give a damn about me, but he does trust me not to screw him over once he's dead. It was something we friends did as a group - we made living wills and gave each other power of attorney in case of a coma or whatnot." Emily's voice was too calm.  
  
Logan grunted in acknowledgment of her words.  
  
"According to the professor logs, 'Logan' has been acting out of character and they've called in Dr. McTaggert to analyze him," Scott said. "Storm thinks you've just gone wacko. Hank, on the other hand, thinks it's a fugue state, possibly induced by your mutation."  
  
"What are they saying about you?"  
  
"Nothing," Scott said. "Absolutely nothing. But then it's been a year for me, hasn't it?"  
  
A long, uncomfortable silence followed his words.  
  
It was broken by the shriek of tearing paper. Emily set the notebook aside and handed Scott a piece of paper.  
  
"There. Account numbers, websites, passwords, everything." She stood up. "Whatever you do, don't leave town. In the meantime, I've probably been missed and have to go. If the girls call you, tell them you're playing WoW, you're doing a Dead Mine run, and they'll leave you alone." And she swept out of the apartment.  
  
  
Logan watched her go, shaking his head.  
  
"Who does she think she is, popping in and out like that? Don't people knock?"  
  
"I have the feeling that these people sort of live in each other's pockets," Scott said. "It will be harder than we know to make those girls think we're their friends."  
  
Logan snorted. "Think I don't know that? I nearly blew it when they asked me to show them something on that DS thing. Apparently Jeremy's a video-game genius."  
  
"Should've let me do it," Scott said.  
  
Logan found a box of cereal bars. It was the only remotely healthy-looking item in the cupboards, and he vowed to buy some more.  
  
"So the teacher boards really said nothing about you?"  
  
"Nothing." Scott sighed and pushed the keyboard away.  
  
Logan tore into the cereal bar wrapper with his teeth and wolfed it down in two bites. Scott wished, suddenly,   
that he was alone, that he could take the Blackbird up into the sky and escape. He had no control over anything except what he did, and even then this body was unfamiliar and threatening failure.   
  
The crinkle of a cereal bar wrapper pulled him out of his thoughts.  
  
Logan offered one, face utterly casual.  
  
"You want to talk about it?"  
  
Scott swallowed hard. "What was it like while I was gone?"  
  
"Hard. No one talked about it. The students miss you - especially the older ones." Logan chewed thoughtfully. Scott knew that the other man was very guarded with his own emotions and that this confession wasn't easy. "No one uses your office anymore, and they stopped using your car for driver's ed. Storm is running the school now."  
  
"Why? Shouldn't the professor --"  
  
"Charles is dead, Slim."  
  
Scott went rigid. Beside him, Logan went equally tense, suddenly aware of the utter insensitivity of his words.  
  
"How?"  
  
Logan winced. "Slim, it was the battle against Magneto - so much has gone on. Did you know that Worthington Industries developed a cure for mutants? No more mutations. No more blue Kurt, no more deadly Rogue."  
  
 _"How?"_  
  
"Slim..." Logan groaned and ran a hand over his face.  
  
"Tell me, Logan." Scott turned to him.  
  
Being able to see Scott's eyes when he entered the cold, battle-ready mien of Cyclops was a brand new experience and one Logan wasn't sure he wanted to repeat. The expression was utterly wrong on so young and handsome a face -- but then Scott in his own body was young and handsome himself.  
  
"The Phoenix," Logan said quietly.  
  
Scott rocked back like he'd been punched.  
  
This was out of Logan's usual territory. It was always Scott who comforted homesick students and whatnot - Scott or Storm. "Slim--" Logan reached out to put a hand on Scott's shoulder like he'd seen Scott do for a student once or twice.  
  
Scott knocked his hand aside and stood up, body quivering with tension. Then he spun on his heel and stalked out of the apartment, uncaring of the debris underfoot, and vanished into the sunlight.  
  
Logan groaned and face-palmed. Why did they have to do this now? He knew that there were stages to grief, but they were in a situation that definitely qualified as an emergency. For Scott to go running off now in an unfamiliar town was folly. Never mind that Scott's sense of direction was better than that of a compass - he was angry and might run into someone his body's previous occupant ought to know.  
  
Damn. Logan leapt up and ran to follow his teammate, cursing this body and its pathetic sense of smell.  
  



	3. Chapter 3

The world sped by in a blur of color and sound. Scott didn't care. He had to get away. If he just ran it would all disappear and he could find that space in his own mind, that quiet place far away from the world, the space that Jean had showed him.

Jean.

_No._

He let out a sound that sounded like a sob, but he didn't care. His lungs were beginning to burn, and his head was beginning to spin.

This body was sick.

Scott stumbled off of the sidewalk and across a patch of grass. Not a moment too soon, his knees gave out, and he collapsed on cool cement in the shade. Scott closed his eyes and fought to get his breath back.

The professor was dead.

Jean was dead.

 _He_ was dead.

He turned sideways and began to retch at Aristotle's feet.

"I thought my sense of smell was gone, but maybe I was wrong."

The voice was a stranger's, but Logan's blunt tone was all too familiar.

Scott wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and sank back against the bronze statue of Plato.

"Circle of geniuses. Should've known you'd find this way by instinct, Slim."

Logan-in-Jeremy's-body took up post leaning against da Vinci.

"Go away," Scott said.

"Do you know how far you ran? Halfway around the block. Granted, a town block isn't as big as a city block, but still - I had to work to catch you. That body might be sick, but it runs like a frickin' gazelle." Logan was breathing hard, and he sounded a touch annoyed about it.

They were two West Point-grade mutant military commanders stuck in the middle of small-town intermountain west in non-mutant bodies. They were helpless, or as good as. Scott wanted to scream. Wanted to let his optic blasts sunder the sky and scream.

Only his optic blasts were gone.

And now he could see color.

Scott opened his eyes and rolled over onto his side, staring at the grass. It was green - so many different shades of green clustered together as if one. He began to count them and categorize them - yellow-green, lime green, dark green, hunter green, forest green, winter green. Ten, thirteen - no, fifteen different colors. He hadn't seen green in years.

"Scott?" Logan asked quietly.

"It's gone. My life - everything I knew. It's gone."

"Yeah."

"Charles is dead. Jean is dead. I - I might be dead. I've been gone for a year. I woke up in a world I don't know." Scott didn't look away from the grass, still drinking in the glorious hues.

"Does technology allow teleportation yet? Or is that too mutant-sounding and now they call it warping? You said that Worthington Industries developed a cure for the mutant gene. Does it work? Will I even still be a mutant if I get my body back?"

"Couldn't say. Worthington did it to cover his ass, like all rich men and politicians. His son's one of us - poor kid has giant wings. Looks like an angel. A demented, moody, teenaged angel." Logan tilted his head to crack his neck, but no sound emerged. He no longer had adamantium in his body.

Scott's gaze drifted toward a patch of tiny yellow flowers - buttercups in the grass and dandelions, beautiful weeds. His body was beginning to hyperventilate, but he didn't care. He closed his eyes. He didn't care. Either way he went, he was dead, swallowed in the bottom of a lake or wasting away in a stranger's body.

Logan's hand closed over his shoulder.

"Slim, talk to me. What's going on in your head?"

Scott could hear Jean whispering in his ear. He was fifteen and a year blind, and all he knew of Jean was her voice and the way her skin smelled, clean soap and teenage girl. She was teaching him how to shield his mind, pressed up against him from behind, thrilling him with every brush of her lips against his ear.

"It's like falling off the edge of a cliff in slow motion. Drift backwards into the depths of your own mind, like the bottom of the ocean, where there's no light and the pressure could kill you, where no one can follow you."

Scott could do that. His shields were up - they were always up anymore - but it had been so long since he'd been alone in his head. Or was it too long?

"Slim?"

That wasn't Jean's voice. He could ignore it. He just had to start falling backward and he would be safe from the world, safe from anything that could hurt him.

_"Scott!"_

 

Logan watched Scott's breathing speed up faster and faster, and his face was turning red from hyperventilation. With one practiced motion, Logan tilted Scott on his side in classic first aid recovery position and hoped the boy's breathing even out. What was this body's medical condition? Was it respiratory? Did Kit need meds?

Just as suddenly as it had started, Scott's hyperventilation ceased.

His breathing became slow and worryingly shallow. Logan cursed under his breath in absent Japanese and slapped Scott's face lightly.

"Slim?"

No response.

The boy's eyelids fluttered as if he were dreaming wildly. That was impossible. There was no way he could fall into a REM cycle that quickly.

Logan slapped harder.

No response. A frantic poke at the boy's throat revealed that his pulse was light and thready as well. Logan wasn't a doctor, but he knew enough about life and death to know that wasn't right.

He knelt and spoke in a low voice.

"Slim, man, you gotta come back to me. Come on - we have to get out of here together. I need your Napoleon games and you need my guts and glory. Ya hear me, kid?"

The boy's breathing stopped altogether.

 _"Scott!"_ Logan grabbed him and shook him so hard the boy's teeth rattled. He slapped Scott hard across the face again, and this time it left a burn-red hand print. "You snap out of it right now, soldier, you got it? We're on level one alert and we're not in a secure zone. We need an escape route ASAP."

Scott's eyes snapped open, and he sat up, eyes wide. He rolled off the cement bench and landed in a crouch below the statue pedestals, scanning the area quickly. Logan knew that look on his face - it was Cyclops, live and kicking, who could calculate angles in an instant and drop a man from two-hundred yards two seconds after he'd been marked.

"Sit rep?" Logan asked in a low voice, crouching down beside him.

The answer was automatic, sharp. "Unfamiliar territory, excessive numbers of civilians, no cover toward the nearest exit. I recommend we head west two hundred yards, take the building, and establish cover from there."

Logan reached out to put a hand on Scott's arm and the boy whipped around, catching Logan's wrist and spinning him to the ground in a pin.

Logan lay face down on the cement and waited, listening to the breathing behind him even out and become relaxed. The pressure on his wrist abated, and he sat up.

Scott was slumped against Aristotle's pedestal, having narrowly avoided landing in his own puke.

"I know how you feel, Slim, and I know that it bites. Hard." Logan leaned over and caught Scott's gaze.

Scott nodded, staring at his shoes.

"But I also know that you can deal with a crisis while you're completely disoriented. If _I_ can, you can. You're Cyclops. Don't let a little body-switching malarkey screw with you." Logan's voice was low and steady, almost soothing. Scott found himself latching onto the words and their gentle rhythm. He nodded slowly and started to his feet.  
Logan bared his teeth in a satisfied grin. "Now come on. Get up. Back to the apartment. Let's take advantage of Kit's uber-computer."

"Uber-computer?" Scott asked.

Logan shrugged. "So I picked it up from the blue elf. Big deal."

Scott had to turn away to stifle the laugh that would have turned into a sob. Kurt - and Storm, Hank, the rest of the school.

He missed them fiercely. He missed Jean fiercely, but then he'd been missing her for a long time. He didn't know how to miss Charles. On one level he knew the man was dead, but the last time he'd seen the professor the man had been sipping tea and perusing his well-worn, beloved copy of _The Once and Future King._

Logan slung an arm out to punch Scott lightly in the shoulder, then aborted the motion midway through and attempted an awkward hug.

"Everything will be fine, bub."

Scott smiled faintly; he was touched by the other man's genuine empathy. "Thanks, Wolverine."

"It would be better if I could have a cigar."

"Not today it wouldn't be." Scott looked down at himself and frowned. "I'm wearing slacks and a button-down shirt. Do I have an office job?"

"What did it say on Emily's paper? And I don't need my old nose to tell me that you've been wearing said slacks and button-down shirt for more than a day." Logan wrinkled his nose and pulled away slightly.

Scott blushed. "Sorry. Let's take some showers and have some food when we get back to my place. I think we'll be better able to plan an attack when we're not running on empty stomachs."

"Best plan I've heard all day. That's the Scott I know and love."

"Glad to know you love me," Scott said drily.

"Shut up." Logan did punch Scott in the shoulder this time.


	4. Chapter 4

Scott was right - a shower and food had done wonders. But that had been hours ago. Logan had ordered out for pizza and tried to help Scott, but the other man was the computer adept and Logan wasn't any help at this point. Scott was attempting to compile everything he knew about both of their lives, and two hours ago he had called Emily on the phone to ruthlessly pump her for information. All the while he was checking road maps, rental car agencies, and a variety of other travel plans.

Logan was bored. There was no question about it.

As a last resort, he fished around in Jeremy's coat pocket for that black DS device. It took a minute or two for him to figure out how to turn it on, but eventually it came to life with a strangely pleasant pinging noise. As Logan had no clue what the GBA game was, he decided to take his chances at Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. After a few more hesitant pokes at the buttons, the game came to life, and Logan was as lost as he had been before when Gina had asked for help on the Garden of Madness level, but he was doing all right, killing things with his big sword and earning money. Soon he figured out that the maze-like configuration of white lines on the upper screen was a map, and that he could use it to navigate his way through the rooms. A glance out of the corner of his eye told him that Scott was still engrossed in his work. He still hadn't figured out a plan, it would seem.

After a giant beast with a shield felled his little onscreen character, Logan switched off the device and stood up. He meandered into the kitchen and fixed himself a glass of water, grimacing at how dirty the dishes were. After staring at the pile of dishes in the sink, he sighed, rolled up his sleeves, and began running some hot water.

In the background, Scott seemed agitated by his cellphone conversation.

"An oxygen tank? You have no idea how badly that would hamper my mobility...just a precaution? Then it's one I'm not going to take. There's a doctor where we're headed..."

He sighed and tipped his head back, reaching up with his other hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. Logan remembered that sometimes Scott's mutation - or the weight of his glasses - gave him headaches. The gesture was so utterly Scott that for a moment Logan wasn't seeing blond hair and hazel eyes - he was seeing dark hair and those forbidding red shades. Idly, Logan wondered if the emotion he was seeing in Scott's eyes now that they were no longer hidden was more Scott than Kit, or perhaps the other way around.

As Logan washed, he caught a glimpse of his own reflection in the dirty rinse water. Jeremy was young - so young in comparison to the face Logan usually saw in the mirror first thing in the morning. Jeremy was certainly no less hirsute than Logan himself. He reached up and scratched at his scruffy jaw. He wasn't sure what he'd do if he were completely smooth-faced like Scott - or Kit.

Logan wondered what he had been like at Jeremy's age. Was he in university? Was he working? Was he married with children already? Were his war heroes Washington and Napoleon or Grant and Lee?

He shook his head free of those thoughts. He'd tortured himself about his past enough for one lifetime - and possibly enough for several. He had no idea how long he had been alive.

Logan set the last of the dishes into the rack to dry and then toweled his hands off. He sauntered back into the den where Scott was slumped over Kit's monster computer and looking exhausted.

"Thanks, Emily. That's all I wanted to know. Yeah. Bye."

Scott snapped the cellphone shut and tossed it to the other end of the sofa where it bounced and landed in the crack between two cushions, threatening to disappear.

"So...she help at all?"

"Yes and no."

"What's the problem?"

"Kit's the problem. I don't have my body - that's the problem. It's a damned liability is what it is." Scott dragged his fingers through his hair, frustrated.

The two men sat in silence, each contemplating the enormity of their problem.

Gradually, Logan became aware of a soft pinging noise. He lifted his head.

"What's that?"

Scott frowned. "What's what?"

"That sound."  
Scott raised his head as well.

They saw it at the same time, words splashed across the giant expanse of the far wall. Scott had been trawling some underground mutant and anti-mutant boards, and something important must have pinged.

_"We are currently in possession of a mutant, for now referred to as Number 7, who possesses the unique ability to destroy things by looking at them. We are running tests on him as you and I speak. It should be noted that Number 7 is mad, insisting that he is not a mutant and someone else entirely, and was terrified the first time he opened his eyes. We suspect that he has only manifested recently, which is strange given that he has advanced beyond adolescence, but he is an excellent specimen. A team has returned to Alkali Lake to explore the surrounding area and see if we can find others like him. He claims he was asleep in bed before he awoke in our lab, we so suspect that a mutant colony is located in near where we found him."_

"Alkali Lake," Scott whispered.

Logan stood up. "Looks like your body is still alive. We gotta go, now."

Scott shook his head. "No. We have to find out who posted this and where it's from." He sighed and buried his face in his hands. "I'm not that good a hacker. Kitty always did that sort of thing for me."

Logan sighed and swiped a hand over his face. "Did you learn anything useful from what's-her-face?"

"Emily. And...the information would be useful if it were remotely similar to the boys who used to inhabit these bodies." Scott set the keyboard aside and pushed himself to his feet, stretching. "If this mass of circuitry is any indication, Kit is some sort of computer genius, so there's no way we can ask someone else for help without looking completely suspicious."

"So...we should find out who these people are, track them down, and start leaving now," Logan said. He nodded toward the door. "Clean out Kit's account and go."

Scott shook his head. "No. Take all of his money? Forget it." He reached out and grabbed the last slice of pizza and leaned against the counter, munching on it thoughtfully.

"Well, make a plan, leader-man, because we have a road-trip to take, in case you've already forgotten." To make his point, Logan snatched the crust of pizza out of Scott's hands and wolfed it down.

The two men faced off, hazel eyes meeting black, and they stared, neither willing to look away. Scott saw Logan's jaw tighten, and it was bizarrre, seeing Wolverine's determined stare cross a younger man's face. Did Logan have such dark eyes as well, or was that all Jeremy?

Footsteps on the stairs startled them both.

"Sssh! It's supposed to be a surprise."

"It's not going to be a surprise if you're so damned loud, moron."

"Do you think they've guessed?"

Three female voices, only vaguely familiar.

The staring contest turned into a moment of shared panic, and then as one both men dove for the nearest door - which was a closet. Scott ripped open the door and flung himself inside. Logan stuffed himself in after and dragged the door shut after him. It was a tight fit. Scott was sure Logan's elbow would suffocate him at any moment, and the door didn't close all the way, so Scott had to wind an arm around Logan's waist and cling to the doorknob to keep the door from opening all the way.

For several moments, Scott could feel his heartbeat and Logan's fill the silence in tandem, the pounding of a large, panicked drum.

And then the basement door opened.

Scott held his breath and ducked his head down, burying his face in Logan's neck. He felt the other man stiffen but he didn't care - he just didn't want to be seen. It was an instinctual reaction - if he couldn't see them, they couldn't see him.

Logan inhaled sharply.

"Kit, Jeremy, come out come out wherever you are!"

"The computer's on. Kit can't have gone far."

"Pizza box is warm as well - so it's a fairly fresh order."

"Kit's car is in the driveway, and Jeremy's truck is still outside. They're still here - somewhere. Gina, you check the bathroom. Alexis, you check the bedroom. I'll check the kitchen."

"Mary, we're in the kitchen, and it's not like they could hide under the sink. Besides, I'm not going near his bedroom. His dirty laundry will probably eat me."

Scott eased his head up cautiously - and ended up with his nose buried in the nape of Logan's neck. Jeremy had long hair, and it was tickling Scott's nose. He had to sneeze. He _had_ to.

Now that he could see the girls' faces he recognized them - Mary and Alexis, whose apartment he and Logan had woken up in, and Gina, Kit and Jeremy's best friend. A girl he hadn't seen before lingered near the doorway, hands in her pockets, in a classic defensive posture. She looked as if she wanted nothing more than to turn tail and bolt back up those stairs.

Mary turned and flashed her a gentle smile. "Come on, Dakota, Kit's chain mail won't really eat you."

Dakota retreated behind her wavy dark hair and shrugged. "I just don't think we should be here if they're not here is all."

Gina prodded the pizza box again. "If the boys are going to be stupid and not come out, we should just go."

Alexis tossed her dark curls. "I'm with Gina. We should just go. This was a dumb idea, and it was Emily's idea in the first place. It's not like we can pull it off without her."

"Wait, guys," Mary began, but Alexis and Gina swept out of the apartment.

Mary threw her hands up in defeat and marched into the kitchen. Scott and Logan twisted ever so slightly, becoming even more entangled in each other, so they could see what she was doing. She rifled through the contents of the fridge and eventually came up, victorious, brandishing a carton of orange juice.

"Should you be doing that?" Dakota lifted her head, and she froze.

Scott looked at her, and she looked at him.

And then she smiled and put a finger over her lips.

"Mary, put the OJ down and let's go. We can try their cell phones or something."

Mary wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and put the carton of juice back into the fridge.

"Yeah, we'll try again later when Em's with us."

Scott and Logan watched intently as the two girls filed up the stairs and out of the apartment.

As soon as the door closed behind them, Scott let out a sigh of relief and let himself slump back against the shelves. Logan sank back against Scott, equally relieved, and Scott closed his eyes, reveling in the warmth and security of another person. They were safe - for now.

Logan jerked away from Scott abruptly, and both men climbed to their feet. They spilled out of the closet and dusted themselves off, careful not to look at each other.


	5. Chapter 5

Fifteen minutes later, Scott had packed a bag of clothes, a cooler full of trail rations, turned up all the furniture for loose change and spare money, and had mapped out six different routes from Cedarville to Westchester, New York.

"What about me?" Logan asked. "I only had one change of clothes here, and we don't have enough time to wash my other set. Should we just buy some on the way? There's hardly any money in this wallet - I'm screwed."

Scott consulted the paper Emily had given him. "We can drop down to your place and grab some supplies. According to Emily, Jeremy's family is completely used to him dropping in, grabbing stuff, and leaving. It should be no big deal. You just have to act like you're in a hurry and avoid talking to any of them. Now come on - grab that cooler and follow me."

Logan slung Jeremy's backpack up over one shoulder - because it contained entertainment like an iPod and that DS - and obeyed Scott's orders. When he had encouraged Scott to go all Commander Cyclops on him before he meant it only as a distraction. Trust Scott to take his words to heart when Logan wanted to hear it least.

They crept up the stairs, careful not to disturb Kit's grandmother, and headed for the side door.

Logan, who had automatically taken point, had to pause to negotiate the latch on the screen door. He cursed under his breath and shifted the cooler. On the third try he got it, and he nudged the door open with the toe of his boot.

"So nice of you to join the party."

Logan came up short. Scott ran into his back.

Mary, Dakota, and Emily, all dressed in black, leaned against a black van that was parked in the driveway.

"What do we do now?" Logan hissed under his breath.

Scott stepped around Logan and cleared his throat. "Em," he began, but then Mary grabbed the duffel bag from him and tossed it into the back of the van.

"You jerkfaces are late," she said. "Get in! We have to grab stuff from Jeremy's before we head out for I-70."

"You're shotgun," Emily said, clapping Logan on the shoulder. Dakota took the cooler from him and put it in the back of the van as well, so Logan followed Emily to the front of the van. As he passed Mary, she whistled.

"I'm surprised you're not complaining about not driving," she said. "No Asian kryptonite jokes?"

Dakota laughed.

Keeping his face carefully blank, Logan turned to Emily to try to get the edge on the inside joke. "Am I not making that joke tonight?"

White teeth flashed in an expression that was not entirely a smile. Emily hoisted herself into the driver's seat and buckled in. "No. I can always run your side of the van into a telephone pole, after all."

From the back, Dakota said, "She can, but it probably won't be on purpose."

Logan swallowed hard. He wanted Scott to drive.

 

 

The back of the van was surprisingly comfortable. Apart from a stack of luggage and coolers on one side, the girls had made a nest of sleeping bags, blankets, and pillows so the others could sleep if they liked. Scott leaned against a dark sleeping bag and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. He prayed that, whatever was going on, Emily had it all under control. I-70 was the interstate he and Logan needed to take to get to New York, but this impromptu road trip must have been the one the girls mentioned when they tried to sneak into Kit's basement previously.

Dakota grinned at him. "Are you and Jeremy excited?" Something about her tone was dry; she clearly remembered spotting the two boys in the closet.

Scott wasn't sure what he was meant to be excited about, so he shrugged nonchalantly. Oddly enough, Mary and Dakota seemed to think that was answer enough. Mary crawled out of the nest of blankets and poked her head between the front seats to pester the other two.

"So...Emily nearly broke something when I asked her how her conversation with you went." Dakota leaned back against a pillow shaped like Kenny from Southpark and studied Scott carefully.

This was it, the test to see whether or not he had absorbed anything about Kit from his long conversation with Emily.

"She knew she wouldn't like what she would hear. I was honest."

Dakota's laughter was loud and bitter, and Scott jumped despite himself.

"You? Honest? Please."

He frowned at her, but she waved him aside.

"Yeah, sure, look hurt all you want." She held out one fist. "Next you're going to ask me to trust you in a game of evens and odds."

"If you're going to be belligerent about it, I would rather not talk about it." Scott crossed his arms over his chest and darted a look at the front of the van. Mary was talking animatedly, hands flying.

"Belligerent, eh? Maybe you have been paying some attention to Em. Although I think 'bellicose' suits you better." The sarcasm hung heavy in the air, and Scott looked away.

He wasn't the sort to win at word games and verbal sparring - that was entirely Hank's department, as the man had a mind like a steel trap and could probably out-speak the Bard himself.

"Did you bring your iPod?" Mary asked.

Logan nodded. "Yeah - it's in my backpack."

"Did you bring your DS?"

Dakota reached out and poked Mary in the foot. "Stupid question, sister. This is Jeremy we're talking about. He can't live without electronics, what with that pacemaker and all." Her tone turned wry at the end, but Scott saw Logan's shoulders go tight.

His body had a pacemaker?

Voice utterly neutral, Emily said, "Mary was gullible about the pacemaker once. Remember that Jeremy is the only one of us who owns a coonskin hat. He wanted to be a mountain man, you know."

Oddly enough, Scott could picture Logan as a mountain man, and not just because he was Canadian. Logan was self-sufficient in a way few modern men could comprehend, but then Logan wasn't modern at heart, was he?

The girls laughed good-naturedly.

Then Dakota said, "Jeremy, when you grab your travel bag, will you also bring your guitar? You can play and I can sing."

Mary threw her hands up in surrender. "I can't sing!"

"Neither can I," Emily agreed heartily, "and Kit won't sing, so it'll be up to you two choir alumni, won't it?"

Scott met Logan's panicked gaze in the rearview mirror.

Logan couldn't play the guitar.

 

 

As it turned out, Jeremy lived in a huge mansion in a ranch town. Somehow Emily knew the code for the gate, though perhaps she pretended Logan had whispered it to her then and there, and Scott gazed out at the vast grounds. He could see a corral in the distance. Did Jeremy know how to ride horses? Logan did. Emily parked the van off to one side, and then she and Logan disappeared into the house.

"Should we go with them?" Dakota asked.

"Nah." Mary began to paw through Jeremy's backpack. "Emily will make sure he doesn't take too long."

Ten minutes later, a very harried-looking Logan emerged from the side door bearing a duffel bag and a guitar case. Emily glided along serenely behind him. Scott noticed that, though she no longer wore a bindi or traditional clothes, she still had those lovely daggers tied up in her hair.

"Was your father home?" Mary asked in a low voice. She sounded concerned.

Logan shook his head, jaw tight, and climbed into the front seat. Emily passed back his bag and the guitar case.

Dakota patted the guitar case fondly as she set it down. "Long time no see, Annabelle."

"That was quick," Scott said.

"Emily's quite the little slave-driver," Logan growled, jaw tight.

Emily smiled into the rearview mirror. "That's Mistress Emily to you, house boy."

The other two girls snickered.

Logan batted Mary's hands aside and reached for his backpack.

"Who said you could go through my stuff?"

The sheer rudeness surprised Scott, for though Logan was rough he knew when to mind his manners - whether or not he actually chose to - and they couldn't afford trouble with the girls. Strangely enough, Mary smiled at the coarseness as if this was typical Jeremy behavior and said,

"I was just getting your iPod set up so we could listen to music. You get to DJ."

Scott felt panic flare up again. Logan's taste in music was - bizarre, to say the least. He had fine ear for classical music, probably from the era in which he had been raised, but then he also enjoyed traditional Japanese music. Other than that, Logan wasn't one to indulge in listening to songs. He liked his silence. After all, it was a fine accompaniment for his paranoia; no one would be able to sneak up on him.

Scott remembered being a teenager, remembered how gangs of friends had songs they shared and loved and could all sing together. If he and Logan were going to blow their cover, it would be here and now, crammed into this van with these girls for who knew how long.

Logan shrugged, however, and allowed Mary to continue her preparations. After a bit of fiddling with the tape player and a morass of confusing wires, she handed him the iPod.

He chose randomly, starting at whichever song was last being played. Mary hit a few more switches, and suddenly the back of the van was filled with music. It drowned out all chances of conversation, but that was probably a good thing.

Dakota began singing along softly.

_"It just takes some time...little girl you're in the middle of the ride...everything, everything will be just fine...everything, everything will be all right, all right..."_

Her voice was pleasant, and she knew a counter-melody to the chorus. Scott might have liked the song more if he believed the words.

The girls fell into an amiable quiet, though Dakota continued to sing along. On the more raucous songs, Mary joined in at the top of her lungs, energetically and with wild abandon, uncaring - or perhaps unknowing - of how off-key she was. Logan kept quiet, nodding his head to the beat on a few of the milder songs. Death metal was hardly his cup of tea.

Scott closed his eyes and took the time to plan. If they took I-70 toward Colorado like he hoped they would, then he and Logan were headed in the right direction. If they drove for six hours they would be make it to Grand Junction just on the border. It was aptly named, so he and Logan would be able to hop aboard a train or hitch a ride with a trucker if the girls decided to go somewhere else. In six hours it would be nearly daylight, and who knew when the girls had last slept - if at all. Scott couldn't remember the last time he had slept in so late. He must have rolled out of bed - disoriented and confused - at about one in the afternoon.

Twelve hours ago, he woke up to realize he was in a different body. He couldn't decide if that was better or worse than if his initial suspicions had been true. Was it better to wake up in the dying body of a boy or wake up in his own body knowing he'd been drunk enough to fall into bed with one of his own teammates, and a male teammate at that.

Scott stared down at his nest of blankets and marveled at the color he could see.

 

 

 

A jab to the shoulder startled Scott out of his half sleep. Before he knew up from down, he grabbed the offending hand and twisted.

Mary yelped and tried to pull back, which only twisted her wrist further.

"There's a reason I didn't want to wake him up," Dakota said mildly.

"I'm sorry," Scott said. He sensed someone else moving beside him.

"You can open your eyes, you know," Emily said.

Logan sounded amused. "He probably just doesn't want to see Mary's sad little face and feel guilty."

Scott opened his eyes and saw Mary rubbing her wrist ruefully.

"We've stopped for the night. Come on - we have a hotel room."

"One room?" Scott asked. "Surely Lo - Jeremy and I can have a room of our own. We have money, right?"

"This road trip will take a week," Emily said. "We're broke college kids. If we have to deal with each other's snoring for a bit, the money we save will be worth it once we get to New York."

"New York." Dakota smiled a little bit dreamily as she reached for her bags.

Scott noticed that everyone else had their bags and were ready to go.

"Are you excited yet?" Mary asked. Logan flinched when the Amazonian girl flung an easy arm around his shoulders and led him toward the motel doors.

"It's been years since they've seen their friend, and to see him onstage in Broadway is a rare honor," Emily said. She glanced over her shoulder and cast Scott a significant look. "But they're men, Dee, they don't get excited about tearful reunions."

"Ten bucks says Tim will find Jeremy in the audience and drag him onstage to sing." Dakota's grin turned wicked.

"It'll probably be something really embarrassing like _I'll Cover You_ or _Out Tonight_ ," Mary added.

Scott could only stare when Emily swiveled her hips suggestively and dragged a hand down her torso with a saucy, "Meow."

Logan wore that cornered look of his, the one he wore that time Ororo asked him if he would waltz with her, but the other girls just laughed.

"Come on," Mary said. "Let's get checked in."

 

 

Getting ready for bed took longer than Scott was used to because they had to take turns using the bathroom. As it turned out, Dakota, Mary, and Emily were also possessors of Nintendo DS's, so they teamed up against a very disadvantaged Logan in Tetris while Scott brushed his teeth and changed for bed. It seemed that Kit slept in boxers and a t-shirt, which was what Scott slept in, but he wasn't used to sleeping in a room with four other people.

The three girls piled into one of the double beds, squabbling over pillows and blankets with comfortable familiarity. Scott and Logan had a silent, awkward tango over who got to sleep in the best tactical spot. After a moment it was decided that, as Jeremy's body was the bigger of the two, he would make a good human shield next to the window, whereas Scott was smaller and quicker and would be able to maneuver between the beds and to the door.

Scott grabbed one pillow and set it at the other end of the bed. He punched it a few times to fluff it up, then lay down and closed his eyes.

 

 

Everything was black and red. Scott was back in his shades, able to open his eyes. He was curled in a ball on cold, damp ground, shivering and struggling to breathe. Wind whipped around him, burning and stinging as it flung pebbles and twigs at him. A branch lashed across his back and he cried out, arching in pain.

That's when he noticed a pair of red sunglasses swirling in the air above him, carried on an invisible tornado.

And then there was the voice in his head.  
_Why did you leave me, Scott? Why did you come back to me only now? Didn't you miss me?_

Scott wanted to scream.

_Of course I missed you! I missed you every day! I would have flung myself into that lake and died with you!_

The Phoenix drifted toward him. She wasn't walking, exactly, her feet hovering just above the ground. Long, dark red hair streamed around her face - the only true red, Scott called it, because it was one of the only reds he saw that was actually red.

She wasn't his Jean, though. Her eyes, her skin, her entire being throbbed with the unearthly power that was The Phoenix.

She knelt beside him and drew him into her arms, and then she was kissing him. Scott closed his eyes, but her voice drove relentlessly into his mind, _Scott, why did you leave me? Scott - didn't you love me?_ But kissing her was just like kissing Jean, and it felt so good, almost like coming home.  
And then his body was shaking apart, energy burning through him and threatening to rip him cell from cell --

 

 

Scott sat bolt upright, breathing hard. He glanced over his shoulder at the other bed. Mary was asleep and snoring easily. Dakota was twisted onto her side with her face buried in her pillow. By sharp contrast, Emily was asleep flat on her back, corpse-like in her repose. She stirred, as if sensing eyes on her, and awoke.

"Kit - Scott," she murmured drowsily. "You all right?"

He nodded. "Yeah. Go back to sleep." It was light outside, Scott noticed. He wouldn't be able to get back to sleep.

Emily nodded and closed her eyes again.

Scott sighed and swiped a hand over his face. He remembered those nightmares. Were they old, now, since he had been in oblivion for a year?

One hand was shaking, he realized. When he looked down, the other hand was shaking as well.

" _Merde_ ," he said under his breath, silently grateful to Remy and Kurt for helping him broaden his colorful vocabulary. Then he sank back against headboard, careful not to disturb Logan, and tried to catch his breath.

"Bad dreams, Bub?"

Scott jumped, one hand coming up to strike. Logan sat up slowly, growling when Jeremy's body wasn't as strong as his. He cast Scott a look. Scott knew that look for too well. He had seen it on every staff member's face at least once in the months following Jean's death. It was concerned eyes asking silently about his insanity, because they were sure he was losing his mind.

"Something like that." Scott turned away and studied the pattern on the wallpaper.

"Wanna talk about it?" Logan propped himself up against the wall, studying Scott with those dark eyes. They were too much like Logan's eyes for comfort. Scott had avoided looking at himself in the mirror the night before while he brushed his teeth and washed his face. Kit's sweet youthfulness, the innocence in his eyes - it was someone else. Wasn't Scott. And he wasn't sure there would be a Scott to go back to.

"Sometimes I dream about myself from...before," Logan said.

"Before?" Scott turned back to look at his teammate.

"Before I came to the school. Before...Weapon X."

Scott frowned. "I thought you didn't remember your time before then."

"I don't, not really. But I have dreams sometimes, and I know they're from before. I don't know where I am or what my name is, but I know there's another mutant in the house, and he's murdering my wife."

Shock ricocheted through Scott's chest, competing with the nerve-wracking horror that had brought him awake. "What?"

Logan's voice was disturbingly calm. "I had a wife once, or so people have told me."

"You saw her killed? I -- I'm sorry."

"Maybe. Or maybe it's just a dream." Logan shrugged and snorted, then, a much more common Logan gesture. "And why are you sorry? It's not like _she_ tried to kill _me_."

Even though that was typical Logan bluntness, Scott flinched.

"Ah, Bub, I'm sorry." Logan scooted closer, frowning, apologetic. He put an awkward hand on Scott's arm. "I didn't mean it like that. I know it wasn't Jeannie who --"

Scott yanked his hand away. "I know what you mean."

"I shouldn't have assumed," Logan said in a low voice. "I mean, we got to Alkali Lake and all we found was an explosion of telekinesis and your red shades. You don't go anywhere without your shades..."

"Did I ever tell you why I left that day?" Scott asked. That day. He said it and it sounded so far away, which it was, but to him it was only yesterday.

Logan shook his head.

"I could hear her voice in my head. She was calling to me - she was still alive."

Surprise flared in those dark eyes. If Scott stared into them hard enough he could see Logan and not Jeremy. He could see a rugged jaw covered with wiry stubble instead of carved cheekbones and long, wavy hair.

"I knew she was alive because it was her telepathy. I could feel it." A slow, melancholy smile spread across Scott's features. "We've been connected to each other telepathically since we were seventeen, you know. At first she did it so I wouldn't be blind, but then --" He shook off the reverie. "So I went to her. I drove back to the lake to see if I could find her."

"Did you find her?"

"Yes." Scott swallowed hard. The dream was starting to creep up on him again. He began to tremble ever-so-slightly. "It was as if she had gone away for a year and then come back. Her hair was longer, and her face paler, and when she looked at me, it was as if she had missed me just as much as I missed her."

Logan leaned closer to hear, for Scott's voice had dropped to a whisper, partly to not wake the girls and partly because the words were trying to chain themselves in his throat and make him weep.

"She told me she wanted to see my eyes, that I could take off my glasses, and I was scared, so scared, but she was powerful enough, and I took them off, and I saw her for the first time without a barrier of red and grey. She was beautiful."

Logan's hand curled around Scott's, but neither man seemed to notice.

"Slim, you don't have to --"

"And then she kissed me. It was everything I had been aching for, for a year, and when she kissed me I...died." Scott bowed his head, and his breath was coming in uneven gasps.

Logan shifted closer and grasped Scott by the shoulders.

"Slim, listen to me, you're not there anymore. You're here, in this hotel room with me and three wacky chicks. You're not dead - you're alive." Logan shook him slightly.

Scott gasped and shuddered, trying to nod. He was humiliated, breaking down like this in front of Logan again.

Before Scott knew what was what, Logan had dragged him into a crushing embrace. It wasn't comforting or gentle. In fact, Scott's ribs protested mightily, but there was something visceral and real about being held like that. The mere presence of someone else, someone solid and strong and immediate, was grounding.

When a lack of oxygen made itself imminently dangerous, Scott pulled back, and Logan let him go.

"You okay?" Logan asked in a low voice, searching the other man's eyes.

Scott nodded, and for a long moment they huddled together, searching for familiarity in each other's eyes.

After a moment Logan shook himself out of it and sat back.

"What?" Scott asked, sensing the question the other man had quelled.

"What color are your eyes?"

Scott frowned.

"I've never seen your eyes before, you know. I don't know anyone who has."

Scott had pictures tucked away in his closet, a stack of pictures that featured a smiling, innocent-faced blue-eyed boy. The professor had found them, somehow, and given them to him one day. Scott was grateful that his childhood had not been entirely lost, but he never took the pictures out, and Jean had stumbled across them by mere chance. Scott hated looking at his younger self, the one with the open, confident smile and charming face. He wasn't that boy anymore - that boy was human. He was Cyclops, a mutant with murdering eyes.

"My eyes were blue."

"Same color as Kit's?"

"Darker. Brighter." Scott bit the words out and knew they sounded harsh, wanted to apologize but didn't know how.

Logan merely nodded. "I always wondered what you looked like without your glasses."

Scott shrugged and picked at the blanket.

Another silence fell between them, this one less comfortable than the last.

Finally, Logan said, "You want to play some Tetris? I bet Emily wouldn't mind if you used her DS."

Scott smothered a smirk. His spatial skills were non pareil.


	6. Chapter 6

Emily woke first - as easily and quickly as she had the day before - and soon the other girls followed with varying degrees of grogginess. Soon the entire gang was piled back into the van. Mary took over driving, and Dakota paid for their daily allotment of gas, and then they set off for New York.

The day before had been peppered with stops along the scenic desert mountains of Utah. Colorado offered the grandeur of the Rockies, however, and the girls were content to spill out of the car at random lovely views and drag Scott and Logan into the pictures.

The camaraderie of the night before had dissolved as soon as Emily awoke, and Logan was back to being his gruff Wolverine self, so it was left to Scott - with Emily's help - to play the part of Kit and keep Mary and Dakota from being too suspicious.

With Mary in the driver's seat, Dakota had voted herself in for shotgun and was using her own iPod to dictate the music demands of the day. Scott wondered if it was a teenage thing, an entire group of friends having the same gadgets and liking the same songs. Then he had to remind himself that they were not teenagers but young adults, and that their taste in music was probably not as shared as it seemed, but they were compromising for everyone's comfort.

Halfway from the state line to Denver they pulled over for lunch. Sometime during the last stop for gas Emily had purchased supplies for sandwiches, and so she toted Kit's cooler along with them. They decided that they were too cheap to pay for entrance to a state park, and so they pulled over to one side of the road and ate out in the open air.

"Are you all right?" Mary cast Logan a look. Then she cast another one at Emily and discreetly tugged a few leaves of spinach out of her sandwich.

Logan grunted into his sandwich. "'M fine."

"If you're sure. It's just - you and Kit were awake much earlier than usual. I figured one of you must have had a nightmare, and Kit usually tells me, so I figured it was...you." Mary tugged out the last few leaves of spinach and finally took a bite of her sandwich.

On the opposite corner of the picnic blanket, Emily pretended not to see and merely smiled.

"I did have a nightmare, actually," Scott said. "It's just - Jeremy and I worked through it. Nothing a little Tetris couldn't fix."

Emily raised her eyebrows. "I wondered who else had stained my DS with fingerprints."

Dakota wrinkled her nose. "What? You can't possibly tell who else has marred the shiny black of your DS with fingerprints - it already has fingerprints all over it."

Emily turned her nose up in mock haughtiness. "A girl can always tell."

That caused Mary and Dakota to laugh. Scott, however, didn't doubt that she could tell.

Mary shrugged. "Well, if you two are being less macho about it and more manful about it, hey, more power to you."

Scott caught Logan's eye for a second, but then the other man looked away. It would be impossible to corner him and talk to him about his own nightmares if they were stuck in the van with the girls for the next four hours.

Lunch ended fairly quickly as Mary - the unofficial tour leader - wanted to get back on the road. Dakota took her turn at the wheel - to much joking from the other two girls - and they were off.

Scott gazed up at the mountains with wide, awed eyes. The last time he'd seen the Colorado Rockies he'd been in the Blackbird flying too high and too fast to enjoy the view. That he could see them now in summer in their green splendor was a miracle.

Emily sat shotgun, absorbed in her task as the DJ. Her taste in music was somewhat divergent from the others'.  
Most songs she played were ones that only she and Dakota could properly agree on, though more than once Scott saw Mary mouthing the lyrics.

Abruptly, however, Mary shut off the sound.

"Hey! I happen to like Luna Sea!" Dakota said.

"That you like them is lunacy," Logan muttered under his breath.

Mary grinned into the rearview mirror. "Hey Jeremy, break out Annabelle and give us a serenade!"

As if on cue, Emily and Dakota broke out in song.

_"And I've been lonely like a silhouette, or a serenade!"_

Mary threw her wallet at Emily. The other girl dodged and laughed.

Dakota seemed taken by the idea, however. "Yeah, Jeremy. You brought Annabelle and haven't broken her out once."

"I don't want to play," Logan said. The truth was that he couldn't.

Scott looked to Emily for help.

She sighed. "Guys, if he doesn't want to play, he doesn't have to. He's not a performing monkey."

Mary offered up a surprisingly effective pout. Scott didn't think Amazons could get away with that sort of little-girl pout.

"Pretty please, Jeremy? With whipped cream and a cherry on top?"

"You'd like Jeremy with whipped cream and a cherry on top, wouldn't you?" The riposte came quickly, and Emily clapped a hand over her mouth seconds later. "I didn't mean to say that aloud!"

Mary turned bright red.

Logan's eyes widened slightly. Scott frowned. This was a wrench in his original tactical configuration to deal with the girls. That Emily was in love with Kit was irrelevant as she was aware that Scott wasn't really her friend. That Mary harbored some level of attraction for Jeremy was an unwelcome complication. Scott scowled at Emily.

"I don't want to play," Logan said again.

"C'mon," Dakota urged. "Just one song. It can even be that easy, funny one. Like a Steven Lynch song!"

Logan looked blank at the reference, but he continued to shake his head in denial. He looked distinctly cornered. Scott knew that look. It usually meant that the claws were about to come out and someone would bleed. Possibly to death.

"Jeremy, you have such a pretty voice," Mary began, and Logan's lips skinned back from his teeth in a snarl.

Scott blurted out, "What if I played a song instead?"

Mary and Dakota gaped. Emily pursed her lips, gaze wary.

"Kit...you can play?" Mary asked.

Dakota spoke slowly. "Just because he's never played doesn't mean he can't, right? Did Jeremy teach you?"

Scott hoped Logan realized the full impact of his severe tactical error. "No, I learned from someone else." He reached for the guitar case and opened it carefully. The guitar inside gleamed. It was lovelier than Scott's own guitar, a beat-up old thing he'd bought at a pawn shop. "So...what would you like to hear?"

"What can you play?" Mary asked. She seemed to be taking to this new revelation well.

"Lots of songs," Scott hedged. "Since we're in Colorado, how about some John Denver?"

Dakota pounced on that. "How about Annie's Song? I love that song!"

Luckily enough, it was one Scott could play. He tuned the guitar, humming the melody under his breath as he did so. When he was ready to play, he glanced up and checked his audience. It was a reflex, really, and he was surprised to note Logan staring at him oddly.

"I didn't know you played either," he said.

After a moment, Scott reflected that this talent wasn't one of which Logan would have been aware. As best as anyone at Xavier's school knew, Jean was the only guitarist on the faculty, and even then she had only been a dabbler.

"I haven't played in a while," Scott said. It was honest enough. Truth be told, he hadn't played since Jean died, but that was much longer for Logan than it was for him.

Scott took a breath and began the opening riffs. His fingers fumbled a bit on the chords and arpeggios, but come the second pass the muscle and auditory memory came back, and when it was time to sing his hands were steady.

_"You fill up my senses like a night in the forest,  
Like the mountains in springtime, like a walk in the rain..."_

Kit's voice was a lighter tenor than Scott's own, and it was strange, hearing his own voice in his head carrying the pitch and this other voice tumbling from his lips. Oddly enough, it was Ororo who loved this song. Her claustrophobia made her love of big American skies even more poignant, and the song's open nature imagery held extra appeal to her romantic side. Idly, Scott wondered if Logan had ever sensed someone this way. With his extraordinary senses, surely Logan had experienced this overwhelming sensation of one person flooding his being with her self.

_"Come let me love you, let me give my life to you.  
Let me drown in your laughter, let me die in your arms..."_

Scott reflected that, if Logan had ever experienced this, he couldn't remember. Unexpectedly, his chest tightened. Even though the last lines of the song danced from his tongue only one word echoed in his mind.  
Jean.

Hands shaking, Scott set the guitar down. He turned to Dakota and offered a weak smile.

"How was that?"

She smiled back and flashed him two thumbs up. "Kit, dude, that was awesome! You totally rock!"

"How come you've never played for us before?" Mary demanded. "That's not fair, hiding all that talent."

Once again, Emily was quick to the rescue. "This is Kit. He can probably fly an F16 fighter jet, and he'll never show us."

Logan swallowed hard. "You're good, kid. I have to hand it to you."

"Maybe next time you'll sing with me," Scott said. He met Logan's gaze, and a moment of sharp understanding passed between them. Maybe both of them were thinking of Jean; maybe they weren't. Whatever animosity Scott might have felt in Logan pursuing his girlfriend, both of them understood loss of a loved one. Perhaps Logan even felt it more acutely, having not only lost his lover but also his entire memory of her. There was no more complete a loss than that.

The strange moment passed, and soon they were back to Emily's strange foreign music as she poked through her music collection on her iPod once more. Scott stared out the windshield at the scenery and plotted quietly to himself. The conversations from the morning faded as the others fell into the lull of the late afternoon, buried in their own thoughts. Mary, who was notoriously as bad a driver as Emily, concentrated on the road, while said other bad driver entertained herself by dancing in her seat to the songs she chose. Dakota abandoned her complicity in Emily's music choices and poked at her DS, cursing under her breath and occasionally calling out "Objection!" for no discernible reason. Logan had his eyes closed, but Scott didn't believe for one second that the other man was asleep. Even if he didn't pose as much of a threat in this body, Logan wouldn't be so foolish as to fall asleep in the company of strangers who might try to wake him. It was, Scott reflected, a testament to the man's trust that he would fall asleep beside Scott.

Beside Scott. He shivered at the implications of that turn of phrase and went back to his planning.

***

That evening at the hotel, Scott managed to catch Logan alone while the girls trooped down the hallway to the pool.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

Logan nodded. He poked at the DS, movements constricted with frustration. "Yeah. Thanks for saving my ass back there with that whole guitar ruckus."

Scott lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "I did what I had to so our cover would stay more or less intact."

"So did you teach Jeannie to play, then?" Logan slanted Scott a look that was full of barely-controlled aggression.

"She learned some from me, yes."

"How come I'd never heard you play?"

"It's not something I enjoy doing often, really." Scott was losing control of the situation and they both knew it.

"Why not if you're so damned good at it?" There it was; a full challenge. The gauntlet was thrown down.

Scott shook his head and turned away. "Leave it alone, Logan. This isn't about me."

There came that snarl again, the expression that was pure Wolverine. It was downright frightening on Jeremy's face. "That stuff I told you last night - don't read into it anymore than it is, right? It's in my best interest - and yours - for me not to take an elbow to the ribs and wake up suddenly, got it? I'm sleeping on the floor tonight."

When the girls returned the boys were played Tetris again. Logan was losing, and badly, but both he and Scott kept their mouths shut about it.

 

 

The next day, Scott took his turn at the wheel to guide them into Nebraska. He hated Nebraska. Too many bad memories - Boys Town, coming into his power, living on the streets - came with the flat corn fields and wide blue skies. Dakota took her turn riding shotgun and directing the flow of conversation and music. Most of the songs she played today were low-key and simple acoustic affairs.

"Don't be fooled," Emily said. She was curled up on the stack of pillows opposite Logan, eyes closed because she became car sick easily. "Usually Dakota's stuff is full of emo."

Scott recognized the pop culture term well enough. Some of the incoming students that year had subscribed to the emo fad, and while Scott wasn't sure he bought into the melodrama and angst that came with it, he supposed that mutant teenagers had as much right to low self-esteem and angst as the next batch of human teenagers who came along.

Even Logan hummed along to a few of the songs, though he was cautious to not be too enthusiastic about any song in case it was utterly unlike any songs Jeremy liked. He hadn't spoken a word to Scott all morning, and Scott was more than annoyed. He and Logan couldn't afford this sort of tension when they were in so tenuous a situation.

Dakota's face lit up, and she reached out to turn up the stereo.

"Here you go, Jeremy, maybe this song will get you out of your funk!"

That the girls had noticed the tension was bad. Scott tightened his shoulders and kept his eyes on the road. Every now and then he was distracted by some of the outlandish vehicle colors he came across. They hadn't made cars that color when he was a kid, that was for sure.

"What song is it?" Mary asked. She sat beside Emily, idly stroking the girl's hair and leafing through a history book. A raucous electric guitar riff burst over the speakers, and Emily and Mary sat up straighter. Mary wore a wicked grin, but Emily looked concerned.

A man began to sing.

_"Scotty doesn't know that Fiona and me do it in my van every Sunday._  
She tells him she's in church, but she doesn't go.  
Still, she's on her knees and...  
Scott doesn't know!" 

Scott's spine went rigid, and he straightened up automatically. In the rearview mirror he could see Mary singing along enthusiastically. Dakota's voice was strong and thankfully in key, but she seemed to relish the innuendoes too much for Scott's comfort.

And Logan - Logan wore a huge grin. It wasn't a nice expression. Within a few bars Logan had caught onto the melody and was singing along just as enthusiastically as Mary. Jeremy's voice was deep and strong, almost as deep as Logan's own, and it was in perfect pitch as well. Logan relished each innuendo as much as Dakota, and he deliberately met Scott's gaze in the mirror. After the second verse, Scott realized that Logan was singing "Jeannie" in place of "Fiona."

It had been a long time since Scott wanted to break Logan's face, but the familiar animosity's return was more than welcome.

Emily sang along idly, but she at least looked sympathetic.

 

 

 

When they stopped for lunch, Scott grabbed Logan's arm and dragged him around the side of the convenience store out of sight of the girls.

"What the hell was that all about?"

Logan wore his insufferable Wolverine smirk. "I was just trying to get more into Jeremy's spirit of things - that's all."

Scott dragged a hand through his hair and didn't even flinch when it didn't feel like his hair. "We're in a very tenuous situation right now, and we have to work together. Why are you suddenly being a jerk?"

Logan took a step into Scott's personal space.

"Just because I've helped you out and you've helped me out doesn't mean we're friends, One Eye, and you seem  
to have forgotten that."

"If I had forgotten it, you've given me more than enough of a reminder, and an unnecessary one at that," Scott said. "I don't know what the hell you've been doing in the year since I've been gone, but in case you've forgotten I'm the field leader, and when we're out here you do what I say." He refused to back down, and when Logan advanced again they found themselves nearly nose-to-nose.

"Things have changed. You don't get to just turn back the clock. Whoever you are, you aren't my field leader. I'm the Wolverine and I work alone, or did you forget that?" Logan snarled, the sound rumbling deep in his chest, animalistic. "The Scott Summers I remember knew better than to pry into my personal affairs. You just keep your damned nose out where it's not wanted, understand?"

There were five stages to dealing with grief. They didn't have to be experienced in order. Scott had already had his depression moments mixed with denial - had had several of them, in fact, much to his chagrin.

Apparently, now it was his time for anger.

"Well damn, forgive a man for seeking some sort of comfort when he wakes up in a world he doesn't know," Scott snapped. "Not that it's any use seeking comfort from the likes of you."  
Logan bared his teeth. "There is no comfort for the newly awakened. It's time you realized that. People have to move on to survive. You're just being weak."

Fury flared in Scott's eyes. "Weak? How dare you!"

"I dare because I've done it more times than you have, Bub." Logan stepped forward once more, and their foreheads were almost touching.

Scott was sucked into the dark depths of Logan's eyes, and he felt his breath lodge in his throat. He wanted to wrap his hands around the other man's neck and wring with everything his strength would give him. Unfortunately, fate had seen to it that, no matter what bodies they were in, Logan was much stronger.

Scott closed his eyes to count to ten and quell his anger. He took a deep breath - and his head reeled. He knew that scent. It was Logan, pure and simple. Even being in someone else's body hadn't smothered Logan's scent - heady and primal and clean, like the earth after rain. Scott's senses weren't as acute as Logan's, but years of living blind had sharpened them, and smell was the strongest sense of memory. The man before him was Logan, purely and totally, no matter what he looked like. Scott inhaled again. Something in his chest ached. That scent was familiar, and tinged with a thousand different memories. In the middle of a fight, that scent usually meant relief, a man-sized tank of adamantium come to destroy all enemies.

_You fill up my senses._

Scott jerked back and opened his eyes. He stared at Logan, horrified at himself, at the unmistakable rush of lust that pulsed through him. He did the only sensible thing to do and fled.  
He couldn't drive the Logan's face from his mind, that last expression etched into a stranger's features and Scott whirled away.

Logan was just as confused.

 

Back in the van, the girls noticed the boys' subdued demeanor and spoke in low, hushed tones. The music they played was correspondingly peaceful. Logan drove this time, and Mary sat shotgun.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song credit: Anna Nalick, "Breathe"

"Can't sleep?" Emily strummed Jeremy's guitar with easy, graceful hands.

Logan jumped at her voice. Then he turned to her and growled. He despised not having his preternatural senses.

"No," he muttered. The hotel room had been stifling with all five of them crammed in there like that.

Logan had made sure Scott was still asleep before he slipped out of the hotel room to wander the block. Had he been in his own body he would have worked off some steam by picking a fight with the local ruffians, but this wasn't really his body - he was reminded of that too damn often - and he couldn't abuse it like he could his own.

_"Two a.m. and she calls me 'cause I'm still awake,_  
'Can you help me unravel my latest mistake?  
I don't love him and winter just wasn't my season.'" 

Emily's voice was lovely, much lovelier than when she sang with the others in the car.

Logan watched her graceful hands with envy. His hands were hardly that beautiful. They were graceful, surely enough, but not for making music. His hands were graceful in imparting death, slicing skin and shattering bone and wringing cries of agony.

"What is it with you kids and your damn music, anyway?" Logan knew he was being gruff, but he didn't care. "You listen to it all the time. Man can never get any peace to hear himself think."

Emily shrugged one shoulder and kept playing. "Music makes us feel better. Songs say what we can't."

"Doesn't help that Scott goes along with your nonsense." Logan carded a hand through his hair. All he wanted to do was sink his fist into someone else's flesh and keep pounding until he knew nothing but the pounding of his own heart.

"Maybe songs make him feel better, too." Conversation hardly seemed a deterrent to the girl's musical efforts, and she strummed her way into the chorus.

_"But you can't jump the track,_  
We're like cars on a cable,  
And life's like an hourglass glued to the table.  
No one can find the rewind button, boy,  
So bury your head in your hands...  
And breathe.  
Just breathe..." 

Logan, who had just buried his face in his hands, jerked upright and fixed Emily with a steely glare.

She smiled that whimsical smile again and kept on playing.

The glare faded from Logan's eyes, and he stared at her.

A hundred questions hovered on the tip of his tongue. Why was she helping them, apart from the obvious reason that she was in love with the boy who usually lived in the body Scott was living in now and she wanted him back? Why would she sing nicely now and yet badly in front of the others? Who was she, really? Because she wasn't an ordinary college kid. And why did she keep looking at him like she knew something he didn't?

She sang the next verse and chorus, her gaze never wavering from his.

After a moment, Logan let his head fall into his hands and he breathed slowly, deeply.

 _Just breathe,_ he told himself. _Everything is under control._

"You should take another stroll around the block," Emily said. "Clear your head a bit."

Logan lifted his head and glared again.

Again with that damnable smile. "Don't mind me. I can take care of myself." She tossed her head, causing the shiny hair-sticks in her braid to glimmer under the street light.

Logan eyed her once more, straightened up, and went to take another walk around the block.

 

"Can't sleep?"

Emily strummed a guitar and sang.

Scott dragged one hand over his face. "No. Can't. We're just outside of Omaha, aren't we?"

Emily nodded. "Why?"

Scott made a low, thoughtful noise but didn't answer. After a moment, he roused himself for more conversation.

"I don't know how Logan and I are going to survive this trip if we're constantly at each other's throats. But we need each other to get through this." He raked a hand through his hair, frustrated. "I needed to tell him something, but when I woke up he was gone."

Emily arched one eyebrow. "Oh? What did you need to tell him?"

"Just some stuff about the ex --" Scott cut himself off abruptly. "Only he needs to hear it."

"Maybe you should talk to him about some other things before talk turns business-like," Emily said. "Might save you some trouble down the road."

A light blush spread across Scott's cheekbones, but he just shoved his hands into his pockets and sighed. "Talk to Logan about something else? And the sky may turn green."

A whimsical expression curved Emily's lips, and she sang.

_"Two a.m. and I'm still awake writing this song._  
If I get it all down on paper it's no longer inside of me,  
Threatening the life it belongs to.  
And I feel like I'm naked in front of a crowd,  
'Cause these words are my diary screaming out loud  
And I know that you'll use them however you want to..." 

It was Scott's turn to raise an eyebrow. "You have a much nicer singing voice than I ever noticed before. And we do a lot of singing in that car."

That whimsical curving of the mouth once more. "Everyone now and again I can find a right key."

Scott leaned against the lamppost that Emily and a hooker shared on the street corner and smiled back at her. "That wasn't very subtle, you know."

"Wasn't meant to be. I won't insult you with subtleties. Whatever is eating at you two, you should talk bout it."

Scott looked away. "We have a lot of bad history."

"Then talk it out. Make it gone history." Emily finished the song easily and straightened up. "Sleep well, Scott Summers." She turned and headed back inside the hotel.

Scott watched her retreating figure and pondered the verse she had blatantly sprung on him. No, there was nothing to say to Logan, not here, not now, not with the hounds of his ugly past coming to finally bring him to heel.

As if on cue, Jeremy's bold figure cut through the darkness. He came to the pool of lamp light and drew up short.

The hooker ignored him.

"What're you doing out here?"

"I had to talk to you."

"What about?"

Scott glanced at the hooker, then lowered his voice and drew in. This was strictly business. He kept his gaze down, his head down, so if he chanced to inhale --  
"I made it onto the Internet here while the girls were out getting food. Mutant Number 7 is undergoing a critical operation in five days. We have to get to him - to me - before they put him under the knife. They - they're going to try to fix his eyes. I have to do some checking in Omaha, though, before we head out."

"How much checking? We have four more days on the road," Logan said. "And I thought these Mutant Cure Group assholes were in Canada somewhere."

"They are," Scott said. "There's a medical center in Omaha, though, that might have some information. I need to go there. I'd ask you to stall the girls, but you hardly make an effort to be Jeremy, so that won't work."

Logan's eyes flashed. "Hey! Jeremy doesn't take much effort, all right? And I'm coming with you, anyway. You won't have as good a chance to brief me on your plan as then. You and me, Bub, tomorrow, for whatever shenanigans you have up your sleeve."

Scott felt his temper flare. "They're not shenanigans, dammit! Take something seriously for once in your life, Wolverine. I know you're a big, cool, maverick, but this is important."

"To you, maybe."

"Yeah, to me. You don't have to be such an ass about it." Scott stomped on his heel and headed back into the hotel. "Tomorrow."

"You mean today."

***

Luckily for Scott - and things with Emily were starting to be too lucky for comfort - Emily had family in Omaha. She said that the boys shouldn't have to suffer interrogation from her various aunts, so she sent them on their way to do their own thing while Mary and Dakota accompanied her on her visit.

Scott was surprised at how much of Omaha he remembered. He navigated the streets easily, and Emily gave him directions to an apartment complex where most of her relatives lived.

"They'll have a fit if they found out I came by here and didn't stop to visit," she explained. The three girls fumbled around in the back of the van, trying to make Emily presentable in a casual sari. As soon as she was ready, all three of them tumbled out of the back of the van and headed into the building.

Mary grumbled as she went. "You should have told me - I could have brought that sarwal you made for me --"

Emily cast Scott a knowing smile. "I'll call you when we need rescuing, all right?"

"We're your knights in shining armor," he said lightly.

Logan muttered, "Tin-foil armor, maybe."

The girls were met by a flood of Indian women in a dazzling array of saris. Some of them turned hawk-like glares on the van.

Logan cursed. "What are you waiting for, Slim? Floor it!"

The van zoomed out of the parking lot, down the street, past several frat houses, and then onto a main road.

"So you gonna tell me where we're going now that we've escaped imminent death by estrogen?" Logan asked.

Scott guided the van through several traffic lights and then turned into a parking lot.  
He said nothing. The name of their destination was blazoned across the top of the building in massive blue letters, after all.

Logan climbed out more slowly than Scott, who slammed the driver's side door harder than was necessary. He headed for the double doors, ignoring the way Logan craned his neck to peer up at the words.

"Boys Town National Research Hospital?"

Scott pushed open the doors and was immediately assaulted with the all too familiar scent of hospital sterility. Thirteen years later and they were still using the same disinfectant.

"Isn't Boys Town some sort of halfway house for troubled teens and runaways?" Logan asked. Perhaps he was thinking of Rogue. Hadn't she crashed at a Girls Town a time or two while on the road?

"Yes. Its headquarters are here in Omaha," Scott said.

"So this research center...they use the kids from the place as test subjects?" Logan lowered his voice. He was one of the few X-Men who might hate hospitals as much as Scott did.

"That would be unethical." Scott's shoulders were tense. He marched up to the reception desk and said, "I would like to request the records of a former patient."  
The receptionist - she looked like a college student in scrubs - eyed the pair of young men warily. "Records is on the third floor. Make sure you have a signed and notarized release from the patient permitting you to access those records."

Scott nodded once, jerkily, and headed for the elevators.

"Whose records are we looking for?" Logan asked.

Scott didn't answer the question. Instead, he said, "Once we get to New York, we have to contact Dr. McTaggert. I've been in contact with her via email, rerouting my messages through the teacher boards at the school. I've explained what I can of our situation without making it seem as though I have returned from the dead, and she will assist us in sorting out you and Jeremy. Once you're back in your body, you and I will retrieve my body from the Mutant Cure headquarters in Alkali National Forest."

"You didn't answer my question." A growl curled in Logan's throat. He had been snippy since breakfast.

They reached the records office, and Scott approached the desk.

The elderly woman adjusted her glasses. As soon as she could see him properly - a handsome, well-groomed young man - she smiled. Logan suppressed a snort.

"What can I do for you, young man?"

Immediately, Scott became the too-polite, Ivy-league pretty-boy from his first meeting with Logan. His smile was charming.

"Good morning, ma'am. I've come to pick up some records for my older brother."

The woman poised her hands over her keyboard. "Do you have permission?"

Scott drew a folded paper from the breast pocket of his shirt and slid it across the desk. "Yes, ma'am."

She unfolded the paper and scanned it. Logan glimpsed a notary stamp somewhere near the bottom and wondered when Scott had had the opportunity to pull that off. Once she woman was satisfied that the paperwork was in order, she beamed at Scott once more. "What's your brother's name, son?"

"Summers, Michael S," Scott lied smoothly, and rattled off his own birth date.

The woman's hands flew across the keyboard. After a few moments of adjusting her glasses and squinting at the screen, she said,

"He hasn't been a patient here in years. Usually we get rid of records more than seven years old, but it seems Dr. Skinner requested we keep your brother's on file. I'll be right back with a copy of those on a disc, all right?"

Again with that pretty-boy smile. "Thank you very much, ma'am."

As soon as she was gone, Logan leaned in and said,

"Michael?"

"My first name."

Logan jerked back, surprised. "Did Jeannie know?"

"I can't see how she would not have."

Logan huffed. "Yeah. I always wondered how she could stand you if she could see what went on in your head. Did she call you Michael when you were alone, then? Or Mike? Maybe Mikey?"

Scott's hands curled into fists.

"Or maybe Mickey?"

No one called him Michael, not anymore.

"Shut up, Logan."

Those dark eyes lit in a vicious smirk. "Did I hit a sore spot? Jeannie was bored with what she saw in your mind then, eh?"

Scott whirled around. "At least there's something to see in my mind!"

"Watch it, Bub." Fury spread across Logan's face like a tsunami waiting to crash.

"Why?" Scott practically snarled the words. It was this place, this body, fighting with Logan all the time - he was finally coming apart. "You always went for Jean, in front of me, behind my back, in the middle of the forest for all the students to see - why? What the hell were you thinking when you decided to toy with my fiancée?"

It was the fight Scott always wanted to have but never dared to have, horrified of rending Jean's memory into little more than a petty squabble between territorial boys.

"I was thinking that she needed a real man."  
Scott sneered. "Blank-minded machismo doesn't make you a real man, Logan, and you know it. She was my _fiancée."_

"And she was a woman. A real woman. Not some plastic doll for your sorry Harvard ass to parade around on your arm." Logan's voice was low, fierce, and fast. "I only gave her what she wanted."

"What she wanted was _me_."

"Then why did she kill you and kiss me?" The words escaped before Logan could stop them.

Scott's entire body shook with tremors of unadulterated anger.

"Really, Logan, a man so ruthlessly logical and instinctual as yourself had no reason to take to Jean as you did." He kept his voice soft, icy. Dangerous. "The first time you met her was in her capacity as a doctor, your greatest enemy. But you charmed her anyway. Animal defense mechanism, Logan? You didn't really want her, did you? You didn't know what you wanted, except maybe to piss me off constantly. Why her, Logan? You know so many ways to piss me off - why her?"

"I don't know."

Logan's words surprised them both.

"I don't know what I wanted." He lifted his head and met Scott's gaze, and those eyes were filled with confusion and anguish.

 _That's probably utterly true,_ Scott thought, and the anger began to seep away. If he felt disoriented now, he wondered how Logan managed to deal, feeling this disoriented all the time.

"Here you go."

Both young men gave a start and saw the records woman holding out a CD in a paper sleeve.

"Thank you very much, ma'am," Scott said again, and accepted the disc from her.  
She seemed to sense the unresolved tension in the air and offered an uneasy  
"Have a nice day, boys."

Scott was glad to be out of there. As soon as he made it past the doors he slowed down and sucked in a deep gulp of fresh air.

"Why would your medical records be here?" Logan asked. "And what are we looking for in them?"

"I have certain food allergies. I mean, my body has food allergies. I don't know all of them, and I have to find a food substance that's easy to carry and easy to dose, but not too lethal. We'll need to pick up an epi pen in the next few days. Maybe we can get one at the school." Scott gazed up at the blue sky and felt the shadows in his mind begin to descend. "Come on - let's go wait for the girls."

They drove the van back to the apartment building and parked out front. Scott booted up Kit's laptop and inserted the disc. He read the medical records in silence, leaving Logan to gaze out the window.

"So...you didn't go to Harvard, then," Logan said.

"No."

"You were one of the kids who lives at Boys Town."

"I was."

"Why did you tell me you went to Harvard?"

"I never told you that." Scott scrolled through the documents, his brow furrowed in concentration. "You just assumed. I did go to college, if that's what you're asking."

Logan peered over Scott's shoulder at the laptop screen and saw a series of black scan images. CT scans of someone's brain. Scott's?

"So, what allergies will help us?"

"I haven't found that section yet." Scott jabbed impatiently at the track pad below the keyboard.

The pages of scans and x-rays seemed innumerable. A glance at the date in the corner of one of the charts and a bit of quick math and Logan realized that he was looking at images from of Scott from when he was but an eight-year-old boy. What had happened to such a small boy that he needed such extensive medical attention?

Logan frowned and peered closer at one of the scans. There was something that looked like a mass on the CT scan. Brain cancer?

Scott tensed and shifted away slightly. "Have you no respect for personal space?" He was damned if he was going to admit that Logan smelled nice and the other man's scent was a distraction.

"Do you have brain cancer?"

Scott made a choking sound. "What? No!"

Logan jabbed a finger at the laptop screen, and Scott winced when the liquid crystal rippled from the pressure.

"Then what the hell is that?"

"The portion of my brain the controls my mutation." Scott deliberately scrolled past the image.

Logan scowled and batted at Scott's hand, trying to gain control of the track pad. Without thinking, Scott closed his hand over Logan's wrist and twisted.

The other man hissed in surprise and struggled. He yanked and dragged Scott toward him. Scott managed to save the laptop from a near-death crash with one hand before he found himself on the floor of the back of the van, tangled with Logan.

They stared at each other, nose-to-nose, before Scott recovered.

"What the hell was that for?" He recoiled sharply, but not before the close contact with the other man set his nerves afire. "Dammit - you better not have broken the laptop." Scott knelt to inspect the damage, ignoring Logan while the other man sat up and dusted himself off.

"You're not really looking for allergies, are you?" Logan moved to kneel beside Scott.

The laptop was undamaged.

Scott shook and told himself that he was shaking with fury once again. He scrolled low, then tilted the laptop so Logan could see the list of food allergies attributed to Summers, Michael S.

"Peanut should suffice," Scott said. "We can carry candy bars with peanuts. Even a bit of peanut oil should do it." He sounded a bit defiant and defensive, but he didn't care. This wasn't about either of their respective messy histories; it was about getting their bodies back.

"Why won't you tell me what's up with all the brain scans?" Logan sounded petulant.

"They aren't relevant to the mission." Scott ejected the disc and shut down the laptop. "The girls should be getting back soon."

As if on cue, the back door of the van flew open and the girls, laden down with a mass of tupperware, appeared.

"Wow," Dakota said. "Your aunts are nuts, Em. We'll be eating Indian food for a year."

"Bengali food, no less," Mary said. She turned to the boys. "Here we go! Lots of grub! Hope you boys like Indian."

Then she noticed the way both of them looked disheveled and flushed, and she tilted her head to one side curiously.

"Did you get what you needed?" Emily asked. She knelt just inside the doorway of the van and packed the tupperware into the cooler.

Scott nodded. "Yeah. Let's get out of here. I can keep driving."

"I got shotgun," Logan said. Scott opened his mouth to protest, but Emily shot him a warning look, so Scott just packed away the laptop and crawled over to the driver's seat.

Dakota helped Emily pack away the last of the food, and then Scott guided the van out of the parking lot and back onto the interstate.

Scott and Logan both kept their eyes politely averted while Emily changed out of her saree and into jeans and a t-shirt. All three girls laughed softly, recounting their visit with Emily's relatives. Scott only paid attention with half a mind, concentrating on the road and the solar-flare presence beside him. He knew Logan was just waiting for a good moment to pounce, when the girls were good and distracted, but Scott didn't want to talk to him.

Scott was going to drive and plan his mad mission and pretend that he wasn't hyperaware of every breath Logan took.

"Bub --" Logan began.

"Not now." Scott kept his gaze on the road.

In the background, the girls laughed over something on Emily's video iPod.

"Back at that hospital, I --"

Scott reached out and turned on the radio. He knew he was being childish, but he didn't care. He would rather be angry than afraid. It was good thing Jeremy didn't have Logan's preternatural senses. Scott knew he probably reeked of fear. Once he escaped Boys Town he swore he would never go back. By now he knew better than to make promises he couldn't possibly keep.

 

 

"You're lucky you didn't walk out of there married to the med student down the hall," Dakota said. The three girls were huddled at the table on the far side of the hotel room, devouring an array of exotic dishes from the tupperware containers.

Mary laughed. "Your aunts are funny, Emily. And you never told us your real name was --"

"I dislike being called by it and am glad my parents saw fit to offer me a western name as an alternative." Emily jabbed at some curry chicken with a pair of chopsticks.

"You boys sure you don't want any?" Mary waved a forkful of saffron rice encouragingly.

"No, thanks," Logan said. "I have a hankering for junk food." He stood up. "C'mon, blondie."

Scott scowled at the name, but he stood up. "Ordinarily I'd like Indian food, but yeah, I think I'll go for junk food tonight."

Dakota shook her head. "So classically Kit. If it's healthy, he must run far, far away from it!"

The girls laughed. Scott smiled weakly, and then he and Logan left the room.  
They walked down the block to the all-night Del Taco and ordered food. On the way back to the hotel, Logan said,

"Earlier."

Scott glanced at him and said nothing.

"I thought about what you said."

Scott nodded and had to resist the childish urge to walk faster.

"And I do know what I wanted. But what I wanted didn't matter." Logan's tone was unreadable.

Scott reached the front door of the hotel and went to open it.

Logan's hand closed over his wrist.

"I wanted something from you. I don't know what. Your attention, maybe, or your anger. Toying with Jean got me that. I do what works." White teeth flashed in an unsettling grin. "There's your answer." Logan leaned in close, and Scott swayed on his feet. "Maybe I'll finally get mine." And then Logan pushed past Scott and into the building.

Scott was left, clutching a bag full of tacos and staring off into the distance like a loon.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song credit: Incubus, "Dig"

Logan and Scott weren't talking to each other again, and the resulting dance on eggshells by the girls didn't alleviate the tension a bit. Mary and Emily handled the majority of the driving as they were the only ones (assuming Logan and Scott really were Jeremy and Kit) who had any working driving knowledge of this part of the country. Dakota sat between the front seats as much as was possible given the blockage of the gear shaft, and the girls talked in low voices and listened to soft music. Logan plucked uselessly at Jeremy's guitar.

Scott hunched over Kit's laptop, running mission specs and chatting with Dr. McTaggert. The Mutant Cure group had started to report problems with their precious Mutant Number 7, just as Scott knew they would. Damn. They had to get there soon, or there would be no soul for Kit's body and no body for Scott's soul. At their last snack-and-pit stop Scott had found a small jar of peanut butter. Now all they needed was an epi pen.

And a whole arsenal of assault weapons and Logan back in his own body. Back in his own body and willing to help.

"Here," Mary said to Dakota. "It's probably safe for you to drive. Just keep a weather eye on the note I taped to the steering wheel and nothing will go wrong. As soon as you start seeing signs for I-80 East into Ohio, you call me. I need a nap."

"Uh, maybe that's not such a good idea," Emily said.

Scott glanced away from his laptop briefly. "What's not such a good idea?"

Logan swore artfully in a multitude of foreign languages before settling on, "Are you gorram insane?"

Scott looked up more fully this time and saw Emily, Mary, and Dakota locked over the steering wheel in a deadly game of twister.

"The hell?"

Mary had one foot on the pedals and Dakota had one hand on the steering wheel as she and Mary attempted to switch places. Emily hung onto the steering wheel with both hands from the other side.

The van swerved.

Scott curled protectively around the laptop. Logan swore some more.

Abruptly the van righted itself, and Dakota was driving. Mary collapsed in the passenger seat and promptly fell asleep. Emily crawled into the back of the van and cuddled up to Dakota's Kenny pillow. She looked shaken.

"Was that strictly necessary?" Scott hissed. He crawled closer to Emily, the blue laptop balanced precariously on one hand. "If we die, your friends have no bodies to come back to!"

She nodded. "Not my idea." She looked a touch green.

Logan cast a few glares - not quite as effectual given that Scott knew he had no adamantium claws to back it up - at the girls up front and went back to sulking over the guitar.

"I want a cigar," he muttered.

Scott sighed and poked at the laptop, motions desultory.

Emily peered over his shoulder and then straightened up. "What have you got so far in the way of a game plan?"

Scott glanced at Logan, who had straightened up slightly at the words "game plan," but he didn't dare call the other man over. If they got within two feet of each other they would try to kill each other, of that he was sure.

At least, Scott told himself that was what would happen. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply to steady his nerves. Then he opened his eyes, resolved firmly to ignore the heated stare fixed on him from the other side of the van, and showed Emily the laptop.

"These are the specs I have on the building where they're holding the body - Kit. I'm thinking if we can get someone in there to dose Kit with some peanut butter, their internal alarm system should summon some of the outer guards as backup and we can have an easier shot at getting in."

"Why are we not using, say, a teleporter or something?" Emily asked.

Scott shot her a look. "What makes you think I know a teleporter?"

"A school for mutants, right?" Emily nodded at the school logo in the corner of the other internet window. "It's a guess more than anything."

"I'd rather keep them out of this until we can sort it out," Scott said tightly. "So we're doing this on our own."

"We?" Emily asked. "Does that mean I can take my Desert Eagle .50 for a walk?"

Scott blinked. "Your what? No. Just me and Logan."

Emily hummed thoughtfully, studying the layout of the Mutant Cure headquarters on the screen. "Assuming that they have this place as guarded as they can, and that they have minimal guards here and here --" she pointed at several spots on the perimeter, "for when they need to draw on their resources in an emergency, how many men can you and Logan take, between you?"

"Between us?" Scott stared down at the strange body he wore. Even after five days it still felt wrong, as if he were wearing clothes that were just slightly the wrong size, but enough to make it uncomfortable. "Right now it's just going to be Logan doing the heavy work. And I know he can take out all the guards. All of them. Once he has his own body back."

"His own body, eh?" Emily smiled faintly. "Must be quite the impressive body."

Scott snorted under his breath. "That's one way to describe it."

"Well, if I can't help with the combat, let me offer these suggestions. You're fighting in a forest, right? So some basic rules of jungle combat should apply..."

They devolved into an intense discussion, trading tactics and traps, exits and entrances. A heated stare tingled between Scott's shoulder blades the entire time.

* * *

The hotel that night was only a couple of hours outside of New Jersey. Scott had pushed for a longer driving day, and the girls seemed amenable to it, because somehow driving and playing their DS's and listening to music was better than all of them being crammed into a room together with no proper excuse to ignore each other.

Much to Emily's dismay and annoyance, Mary and Dakota wheedled at the front desk and scored a kiddie cot for their room so all three of them wouldn't have to cram into a bed together.

Of course, that still left Scott and Logan to share the other bed. Scott hadn't looked forward to sharing a bed with someone less since his last huge fight with Jean. Part of that, of course, had been due to the fact that she was telekinetic and would accidentally take it out on him during her sleep, and danger was alleviated now that Logan had no claws, but Jeremy was bigger than Kit and Scott didn't need the wrath.

They were close, so close. The important problem now was how to give the girls the slip in New York. Day six was coming on them fast, and Kit and Scott really couldn't afford to let this go on any longer.

"I want to go soak in the hot tub," Mary said. "I'm tense from being hunched behind the driver's seat for so long."

"I think I'll join you for a bit," Dakota said.

Logan was still disgruntled. "Why are you telling us?"

"Just for your information - in case there's a fire and you need to do a head count outside," Emily said sensibly. She too wore a swim suit and was frowning at the undersized towels that were always the fare in cheap hotels.

Dakota looked slightly hurt at Logan's tone, but then she shook it off. "You want us to grab food from the Burger King on the corner? Save you boys the trip. Unless you want to go?"

Scott shook his head and cast Logan a significant look. "Nah. I'm going to see if I can score some free wifi and do my time on WoW."

At the mention of WoW, all three girls rolled their eyes, and then they left.

As soon as the door closed, Logan said, "We have more important things to do than play video games."

"Don't be dense," Scott snapped. "Emily and I came up with a plan. Get over here and give me some input. You're the only one who'll have your body back - you'll have to do most of the heavy work."

He booted up the laptop and turned it toward Logan so the other man could see the diagrams and plans and the mission outline. Scott would have to get Kitty to wipe this data cleanly off of Kit's system before he got the laptop back. And then maybe Kitty could reboot the entire security system on the school network for good measure.

"You planned this without me," Logan said.

Scott had never heard the other man so petulant. "I started the plans and Emily offered to help. I'm asking for your input now, aren't I?"

Logan opened his mouth to argue more, and Scott cut him off with a sharp gesture.  
"This isn't a democracy. Work."

Scott stood up and began to pace. Then he remembered how much it would annoy him when Kurt did his version of pacing, which involved him popping in and out all over the room, and so he stopped.

Logan poked hesitantly at the keyboard, but he could use a laptop well enough and Scott wasn't going to aggravate the other man further by reading over his shoulder. He already knew what the mission plan said.

Jeremy's guitar case caught his attention out of the corner of his eye, and Scott crossed the room to it. He opened the case carefully and considered. Did he really want to play, given what had happened between him and Logan the last time he played?

On the other bed, Logan grunted and set the laptop down gingerly, then rummaged through the night stand for a pen and some paper.

Good. The other man was focused on mission planning. While Logan tended to rely on his instincts in a fight, he was a still a soldier at heart and liked to have a plan whenever possible. Of course, when one was around Logan, whenever rarely was possible.

As long as Logan was distracted, Scott could play. He had liked to play when he was younger, glad to pick up any useful skill he could - picking pockets, hustling pool, and playing guitar. When he turned thirteen and the world as he knew it went to hell in a handcart, all he had to survive most days was the money he made playing his fingers to the bone, and he'd started hating the chore. He was a quick study, because being able to play people's requests netted him more money.

He tuned the guitar quickly; Logan's picking at it for hours and hours on end had put it slightly out of tune.

Then he had to think of a song to play.

Sometimes, just to keep his old skill up, Scott learned to play songs that the students liked. He hid away in his office in the small hours of the night, picking along to the songs as they played on the radio.

The lyrics of one song came to him suddenly, and Scott had to resist the urge to laugh out loud. Of course - it was perfect.

It was everything he and Logan were and should have been. Maybe it was what Jean had seen between them that somehow made it possible for her to put up with both of them when they were in the same room.

He tested the chords with wary hands, careful to keep them soft, and began to sing.

_"We all have a weakness,_  
But some of ours are easy to identify.  
Look me in the eye and ask for forgiveness.  
We'll make a pact to never speak that word again.  
Yes, you are my friend.  
We all have something that digs at us.  
At least we dig each other." 

Scott closed his eyes and remembered playing in total darkness, playing when he had only his hands and ears to guide him. He was alone with his music there, cocooned in sound. Jean always told him that, when he was at his most calm, music suffused his mind.

_"If I turn into another,_  
Dig me up from under what is covering  
The better part of me.  
Sing this song,  
Remind me that we'll always have each other  
When everything else gone." 

Scott smiled to himself. He understood why his students - and Emily and the girls - listened to music all the time. Songs sometimes had the answers to questions he barely knew he had.

"So, whose government does Emily work for?" Logan asked.  
Scott's eyes flew open, and for one moment he was assaulted by the sheer power of color, color in sharp contrast to the blackness in which he had immersed himself.

"Pardon?"

Logan held up several sheets of notes and gestured to the laptop. "For a mere college kid her tactical skills are professional. So who is she working for? The Indian government? Or our government?"

Scott shook his head. "You'd have to ask her."

Logan set down the laptop and crossed the room to loom over Scott. "And you haven't?"

"Somehow I doubt she'd tell me if she did."

Jeremy's big brown eyes flashed with something ancient and feral, something that wasn't really his. "And it never occurred to you that she might be part of what happened to us? You know The Brotherhood isn't the only group of mutant enemies out there."

Weapon X hung unspoken between them.

"It occurred to me."

Logan was on him in a flash, one hand fisted in his collar. "Are you insane?"

"I'm not insane, nor am I stupid." Scott kept his tone level.

"How long have you known she was dangerous?" Logan crossed his arms over his chest and glared down at Scott.

Scott glared right back. "I've known since the beginning, but she's helped us, all right?"

A sneer crossed Logan's face; it marred Jeremy's features with its cruelty. "Being dead must have made you stupid, Scott. The Cyclops I know has never been that trusting, especially not without his pet telepath at his side to give him the lowdown on the enemy."

"Emily isn't our enemy," Scott said. He had to force himself to sound calm. "At least I still have enough humanity in me to know how to trust, Wolverine." It was a low blow, but he didn't care.

A growl rumbled in Logan's chest. "Don't."

Scott narrowed his eyes. "And why shouldn't I? If you're so proud of what makes you an animal, you should be able to deal with the severe limitations that being an animal puts on you. Always, you mock me for being too human, too much like a flatscan, desperate to be one of them - at least I was human enough to love Jean!"

Logan slammed Scott back against the wall. " _I said don't_."

Scott yelped. "Hey!"

Logan pressed closer.

"Hey - watch out for the guitar --" Scott reached out to it.

Logan pushed it aside with one brief, deliberate motion that was limned in utter fury, and leaned in so his face was inches from Scott's.

Scott closed his eyes and swallowed. Hard.

That fist in his collar shook him roughly. "Look at me, you stupid bastard."

Scott's eyes flew open at the insult.

"Gotcha," Logan said, and kissed him.

The world exploded in sensory overload.

Someone moaned, and Scott prayed it wasn't from him. A hand buried itself in his hair, another settled on his waist and dragged him flush against a firm, warm, body, and a tongue twined with his. Scott surged forward, but Logan kept him pinned against the wall, ravishing his mouth with soft nips and delicate licks that disrupted Scott's sense of balance and made him sway dangerously. The hand on his waist stroked softly, nudging aside the tails of the prim button-down shirt to skate across overheated skin. Scott arched into the kiss. It had been so long since anyone had kissed him so thoroughly, and he wanted more, so much more. Scott reached up and fist one hand in Logan's shirt, keeping the other man pressed against him, and deepened the kiss, swallowing Logan's moans, drinking down his scent and heat like a man on the brink of fatal starvation. The fingertips at his waist slid down to his hip, dipping dangerously below the waist of the neat black slacks, skimming over the soft skin in the hollow of Scott's hipbone. Scott pulled back for a gasp of air, and then that mouth was at his throat.

Scott moaned.

Through his lust-filled haze he heard someone murmur his name, but it wasn't a voice he recognized, wasn't Logan's voice.

_Wasn't Logan's voice._

Scott caught the other man by the shoulders and shoved hard.

Logan tumbled back onto the bed, shocked by violence and abruptly-halted passion. He blinked a few times, clearly caught off-guard by the reactions of a body that he didn't really know.

Scott pressed himself against the wall, breathing hard. Absently, he fixed his clothes. His heart was still pounding, but now for an entirely different reason. Logan's Jeremy-brown eyes gazed up at him with shock and betrayal. Scott couldn't look away, and he refused to back down.

"Scott," Logan began. He sat up slowly, watching Scott as if afraid of scaring away an already frightened animal.

Scott was already frightened. "No."

Logan reached out, and the expression on his face was terribly vulnerable. It wasn't Jeremy, but it wasn't Logan either. Scott had to get away from it.

"Scott, I didn't mean to --"

Scott pushed off the wall and dashed for the door. He ran hard, and he reveled in Kit's body now, at the ease with which it exerted itself and kept on going.

He kept his head down to avoid the blur of color around him. The color wasn't his, and  
it wouldn't do to revel in seeing it when it wouldn't last.

When Kit's muscles finally screamed for relief, Scott halted. He stretched to keep the muscles from cramping, studying his surroundings. He didn't have the impeccable sense of direction that came with his mutation, but apparently his innate, non-mutant sense of direction was good anyway.

He was right outside a hospital.

Scott stared that the foreign reflection in the mirror, at the youthful face and soft blond hair. Then he squared his shoulders and went in.

* * *

"Where was the fire?" Dakota asked.  
An hour and a half and some Rogue-learned skills later and Scott was back at the hotel, the proud possessor of two hospital syringes filled with wonder chemicals.

"Fire?" he asked, voice innocent.

Wrong tone to use. Mary and Emily immediately pinned him with warning looks.

"We saw you book it out the front door like the hounds of hell were on your heels," Emily said.

"Nice alliteration," Dakota observed absently.

Mary grinned briefly. Then she shot Scott another look. "Please tell me you didn't do something stupid."

"What counts as stupid?" Scott asked.

There was an empty space on the bed beside Emily where someone had saved him a Whopper, fries, and a soda.

"I dunno," Mary said, her voice deceptively light. "Go to a strip joint? Buy the latest expansion of WoW after trying them _all_ at the game store?"

Scott saw the opening and took it. He ducked his head and said, "I didn't buy it, all right?"

Logan was very deliberately not looking at him, tearing into his Whopper with angry savagery.

Scott scooped up his food and sat down beside Emily, who cast him another warning look out of the corner of her eye. Scott couldn't look at Logan for more than a moment or two. He felt his heart begin to race and had to quell the angry scowl that threatened to cross his face.

Emily nudged him in the ribs and then lifted her chin at Logan.  
Scott bit into his Whopper.

"Say something to him or Mary will corner him and your cover is blown," Emily hissed.  
Dakota and Mary were discussing the relative merits of minimalist and imagistic poetry and didn't notice.

"Minimalist poetry is like minimalist music - pretentious and awful," Dakota said.

"But it is an exercise in concision," Mary said.

"More like excision. Of one's own brain," Dakota muttered. Mary laughed.

Scott got another elbow to the ribs and an unsubtle glare before Emily turned to join the girls in her conversation.  
Scott glanced at Logan and then looked away. Heat tingled on his skin, and he knew Logan was looking back at him. When Scott looked up, Logan was picking half-heartedly at his fries.

Then Scott noticed something strange. "How come there's nothing on your burger?" Logan's burger was just a patty of meat between the bun slices.

It was the wrong thing to say, apparently, because the girls' conversation ground to an abrupt halt.

"What?" Mary cried.

Looking rather disgruntled, Logan merely shrugged and continued picking at his fries.  
Dakota cocked her head to the side, curious. "Are you serious?"

Scott darted an accusing glare at Emily - clearly she had forgotten to warn him about something.

She muttered, almost inaudibly, "Make a joke about communism."

Communism and a bare hamburger? Scott was quick-witted, but not even he could make that leap in logic. When all else failed, he could pull a Bobby - act childish.

"I was just messing with you," he said, and flung a french fry at Dakota.

Who flicked a piece of lettuce at him.

Mary threw up her hands. "Hey, let's not start a food fight with me in the middle!"

Logan brandished a handful of french fries. "Then get out."

Kit's reflexes weren't nearly as good as Scott's own. He thought it was an injustice that such was the case when Scott's mind was in control, and then he got a french fry in the eye.

Mary squeaked and dove off the bed, ducking her head for cover. Logan was so focused on pelting Scott with french fries that he rendered himself oblivious to Dakota's machinations, and the famed Wolverine suddenly found himself with an ear-ful of mayo.

"Gross!" Emily laughed and dodged smoothly out of the path of one of Scott's fried missiles.

Logan glared at Dakota and rubbed at his ear. Then he pitched another fry at her.  
She offered up a tomato in recompense.

"Guys, really, not a good idea - we have to sleep in these beds," Mary called out, voice muffled from where she was hiding her face against the carpet.

What started off as a food fight devolved into a wrestling match. Dakota was surprisingly strong, and Scott had to worm free of her grip quickly. Emily was as slippery as an eel and the first to escape. Before long, it was Dakota and Scott against Logan, and soon they had him pinned.

Fury blazed in Logan's eyes, and Dakota clicked her tongue sympathetically. The fury blazed brighter and abruptly died. Logan thumped the carpet and said,

"Uncle."

Mary popped up from the floor. "Now you guys get to clean this up." And she made a bee-line for the door before the others could stop her.

Dakota picked a piece of lettuce out of her hair and said, "I think you boys should clean it up since you started it."

"Hey," Logan said sharply.

Dakota smiled sweetly and said, "But we'll help. C'mon, Emily, we have cleaning supplies in the van."

With too knowing a glance, Emily said, "You boys behave yourselves while we're gone."

As soon as the door was closed behind her, Scott stood up and began scooping mangled fries and hamburger fixings off of the bed he and Logan would have to share.

"That wasn't a joke," Logan said.

"Think I don't know that?" Scott didn't look at him, focused on making sure every crumb was gone. "If they hadn't been there I'm sure you would've done your level best to snap my neck with your bare hands."

"Care to finish what we started?" Logan lunged, and he moved much faster than a boy Jeremy's size ought to.

Scott twisted sideways and dove for the floor, but too late. The other boy's weight caught him at the knees, and Logan tugged. Scott wriggled and squirmed. He hadn't been terrified of another person like this since - well, since the last time he'd been stripped of his visor and aimed at another person as a weapon.

"Hold still, dammit," Logan grunted, and Scott found himself pinned. He squirmed in vain.

Logan pinned Scott's hands down above his head, and Scott thrashed.

"Let me go," he hissed.

Logan merely held tighter, face horribly blank.

Scott tried to twist free. "If you finish this, you'll be everything I thought you were."

"I don't care what you think." Logan leaned in and sneered, eyes alight with hatred and glee and another unreadable, even more terrifying emotion.

Scott's heart thudded against his ribs. He had never truly considered how much stronger the other man was, had always known that he was just that much faster that Logan's strength didn't matter. But he had forgotten, again, that this wasn't his body, that he didn't have his usual speed.

Scott closed his eyes and braced himself for the first punch.

The hand on his face was tentative, gentle, fingertips tracing his features hesitantly.

"This almost doesn't feel right," Jeremy whispered, and Scott's eyes opened.

The hatred and glee had fallen away, and Scott could see that bare emotion in Logan's eyes now, that deep longing and sorrow.

Rough fingertips feathered over Scott's lips, and he parted them, exhaling shakily. Logan let out a groan, and then he covered Scott's mouth with his own.

The hand pinning Scott's above his head slackened, and Scott reached up, burying his hands in soft hair and deepening the kiss. Then that wicked mouth was on his throat, and Scott threw his head back, arching wantonly, desperate for more.

Faintly, he registered the sound of approaching footsteps, and through the haze of lust Scott saw the door open.

No one screamed.

Dakota said, "What the hell?"

Logan jerked back, eyes misty with confusion and heart-stopping lust.

A carton of ice cream fell from Mary's nerveless fingers. It hit the carpet and exploded soundlessly. Scott flinched at the cold shock that hit his skin. He sat up slowly, suddenly horribly aware of what it must have felt like for his students when he caught them in flagrante delicto.

Emily's expression was unreadable.

Mary blinked a few times. Then she pressed her lips into a thin line and said to Logan,

"You could have just told me. I'd have dealt with it. You didn't have to lie." She spun on her heel and pushed past the other two girls.

Dakota and Emily watched her go, then turned back to the two boys still crouched uncertainly on the floor.

Dakota glanced at Emily. "You knew, didn't you? That's why you weren't nearly as gutted when you found out Kit didn't like you. Why did you tell us?"

"I wasn't aware I had anything to tell," Emily said quietly. "I'm going to get Mary, and you two have some explaining to do." And she followed her friend.

Logan cast Scott a look. Improvising in a situation like this was hardly Logan's forte. It wasn't Scott's forte either, really - too many years having a telepath on the team. What could they possibly say to make this all right?

Scott reflected again that he really had been running this mission blind, that he and Logan had been lucky to go as long as they had without their cover going to hell in a handcart. They were close enough that it didn't really matter.

Dakota cleaned up the ice cream, casting them wary looks out of the corner of her eye the entire time.

Something in Scott's chest wrenched when Emily and Mary returned, both with bloodshot eyes.

Mary closed the door, sat down on the other bed and said,

"Talk."  



	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song credit: Howie Day, "Collide"

Scott glanced at Logan, but looked away before the other man could make eye contact. "I'd rather not."

Logan's hand shot out and closed over his collar. "Running away? That's not like you, Bub."

"And what would you know about me, really?" Scott asked. The anger that had flared so suddenly in Logan's eyes vanished, and he let Scott go.

Scott scooted away and sat, staring at his hands.

"You've been a great help, Emily, and I believe you really did your best telling us what we needed to know to get this far, but as it turns out the best laid plans suffer under unforeseen consequences, and I'll admit, this wasn't one of my best-laid plans," he said.

"Don't talk to me. I already know what's going on - or at least I thought I did. Talk to Mary and Dakota, who've had to put up with you two and your adolescent dramatics since the beginning." Emily's voice was strangely cold.

Scott lifted his head, looked into Mary's eyes, and said, "I'm not your friend."

"You're damn well not, kissing Jeremy when I _told_ you I was in love with him!" Mary clapped her hand over her mouth, horrified at her anger. She trembled.

Emily wrapped an arm around her shoulders and shot Scott a glare.

"Smooth, field leader," Logan muttered.

"Shut up!" Scott snarled. He swiped a frustrated hand over his face and looked at Mary again. "I apologize. I misspoke. When I say that I am not your friend, I mean that I am not Kit, the friend you have known for however long. My name is Scott, and somehow I woke up in your friend's body."

Logan drew in a breath sharply, waiting for the denials and hysterics that would inevitably come from a girl with less cool-headedness and military-style calmness than Emily had.

But Mary threw back her head and laughed. "Wow! Of all the stupid things for you to say, that's a new low, Christopher."

Scott threw Emily a look. "You said his name was Kit."

"Kit is short for Christopher, or can be," Dakota said. "But then you probably never read _The Old Curiosity Shop_."

Logan said, "He's not lying."

Another bark of laughter from Mary, this one angry rather than amused. "And you two have never backed each other up on a prank or a lie before." She threw up her hands. "I give up. You two will always be a pair of immature punks. Why you couldn't have just told me that all your gay jokes weren't really jokes I don't know, because _both_ of you know that wouldn't have bothered me."

"Do you want proof that I'm in Kit's body and he's in mine?" Scott asked.

Logan and Emily shot him curious looks.

Mary lifted her chin defiantly. "All right. Let's see it."

Scott reached out and booted up Kit's laptop.

Dakota said, "If you're not Kit, how did you break past his computer security?"

Emily said, "Kit gave all of that sort of information to me, in case he..." She trailed off, and the girls exchanged uncomfortable glances.

Scott hadn't shown this to Logan. There was no need to reveal any more of his weaknesses to the other man than strictly necessary. And there was no need to let Logan think that Scott's body was a loss. At least in Kit's body Scott still had the leadership, tactical, and basic piloting skills that would make him useful to the X-Men.

He found the Mutant Cure group's website and drilled down through the menu options until he found what he wanted. Then he turned the laptop screen around for the others to see and pressed 'play.'

The video was grainy and staticky at first, but soon it focused properly on a cot shoved into the corner of a bare cement room. A tall, dark-haired man was curled on the bed, pale and shivering, sweating and looking rather like death slightly defrosted. He was blindfolded, and his hands were tied behind his back to prevent him from removing the blindfold.

"Help," he moaned.

Logan's eyes narrowed - he recognized Scott's voice.

The man in the video tossed his head. "I'm not who you say I am. My name is Kit West, and I'm twenty-one years old. I'm just a computer programmer from middle-of-nowhere Cedarville, Utah. _Please. Let me go_." There was a desperation in his voice that suggested he had been pleading for a very long time.

A voice, probably from behind the camera, sneered. "Aw, the little mutie has a name and home. How sweet."

Another voice said, "He looks older than twenty-one. I'd have put my money on twenty-seven. He's getting sicker, though. Boss says if we don't try the experiment on him soon, we might as well shoot him and leave him to the wolverines out there."

The first voice chuckled. "Ah well, if we don't get the experiment, at least that's another dead mutie."

"I'm not a mutant," the man on the bed insisted weakly. "My name is Kit West, and I'm twenty-one years old. I'm a computer programmer from Cedarville, Utah."

"Not a mutant," the first voice said. "That's what they all say."

The second voice said, "If any concerned members of the medical community have advice as to how to keep Number 7 from dying before we've finished the tests, you know how to contact us."

And the video ended.

"That's really sick," Dakota said.

"What? That he's a supposed mutant?" Scott couldn't stop the coldness in his voice.

Dakota shook her head. "That they have him tied up like that. No sunlight - no warmth. Nothing. And that they're going to experiment on him." She glanced cautiously at Scott and said, "It didn't look faked. He looked really sick. Sicker than he already is."

"He is really sick," Scott said. "If we don't get to him soon, he'll die."

"Is he...are you really a mutant?" Mary asked.

"Yes," Scott said. "So is Logan here."

"Where's Logan's body?" Mary asked.

"Somewhere else," Scott said. "That's why we came with you to New York. Logan's body is there. Once he has his body, we can go get mine."

Dakota and Mary stared at the grim image on the laptop screen.

"Kit always did call it middle-of-nowhere Cedarville," Dakota said. She seemed resigned to the strange truth.

Mary shook her head. "I can't - it's just too weird."

"As weird as seeing me kiss him?" Logan asked.

Dakota squeezed her eyes shut. "That was _really_ weird. Are you two, uh, together in your normal bodies?"

"No," Scott said.

"I understand," Dakota said brightly. "Pretending to be people you weren't must have been very stressful, and people do strange things when they're stressed out --"

"You're babbling," Mary said gently. Dakota turned red and fell silent. To Scott and Logan, Mary said, "I - I want to believe you. I don't know how I couldn't believe you, except that this goes against everything I know. Let me sleep on it, all right? We'll be in New York City tomorrow, and we can decide what to do then."

Scott nodded. He shut down the laptop and stood up, pushing past the others to go sit on the tiny balcony offered with the room.

***

"Is it because of Jeannie?" Logan asked.

Scott sat perched on the railings, Jeremy's guitar in his hands. "Is what?"

"Your body dying. We never found it, but I always wondered, maybe, if you drowned?"

"I might have," Scott said, and that was true - he had no real way of knowing what happened to him. But that wasn't why he was dying, and he knew it.

"If you don't know what's wrong with your body, how do you know that rescuing it will save it? What if it's too late?" Logan asked.

Scott wondered when the other man would get around to asking that question. Emily and the other two had sat in the room, quizzing Logan about his and Scott's deception for hours, and then the girls turned in.

Scott didn't want to look at Logan or the girls he had hurt. He wanted everything to go away, rather the way he'd felt after Jean died.

"You wanted to know about those brain scans in my medical record," Scott said. Logan started, confused at the sudden non-sequitur, but then understanding crossed his features. He nodded.

"My parents died when I was eight. Plane crash. My mother strapped me and my brother into a parachute and pushed us on the plane. The parachute caught fire, and my brother and I crashed. I was in a coma for a while. Woke up an orphan. Brain-damaged. When my mutation kicked in during adolescence, it wouldn't turn off. The part of my brain that controls my mutation was damaged during the accident." Scott stared at the city's skyline. "What few people know is that my mutation is solar-powered. My body absorbs sunlight, converts it into percussive force, and shoots it out my eyes. If I go without sunlight for too long, I start to die."

"How long can you go without sunlight?" Logan asked.

"The Professor only ever let me get as far as four days before I got too sick, and then he made me stop the experiment," Scott said. "It's been nearly six days."

"So as soon as we get your body into the sunlight, everything should be fine," Logan said.

"If my body's not too far gone, yes."

"Why didn't you ever tell anyone?"

"If it's free information, it can be used against me." In more ways than one, Scott thought.

Logan must have sensed the unspoken words. He let silence linger between them for a spell before he spoke again.

"About earlier --"

"I'd rather not talk about it."

"You can't run from it forever."

"I only need a while."

Logan studied him for a long time, and Scott couldn't read what was in those eyes. Finally, Logan said, "I'm going to miss looking into your blue eyes when we talk." And he went back into the room.

Scott stared down at the guitar and considered hurling it off the side of the balcony.  
These blue eyes weren't his.  


* * *

A hand came down on Scott's shoulder. He sat bolt upright and swatted the hand aside.

"Kit - er, Scott."

Mary's voice.

"It's me, Mary." Her words were hesitant, and she had stumbled over his real name.

Scott opened his eyes and looked at her. "Sorry. Force of habit."

Mary's laugh was strained. "Wonder who you used to sleep with."

On the other side of the bed, Logan tensed.

Scott flashed her a sad smile and said, "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

Dakota was already dressed and standing over Emily, watching the smaller girl nibble on a muffin.

" _All_ of it," Dakota said. "Your mom trusts us to keep you well-fed."

"But I'm not hungry," Emily said.

Dakota loomed. "I said eat!"

Emily ducked her head, chastised, and nibbled more. Scott noticed that the glittery knives posing as hair-pins were woven artfully into the knot of hair at the nape of her neck.

"Bathroom's yours," Mary said.

Logan moved to use it first, giving Scott a chance to sit and collect his thoughts for the day.

Mary sat down beside him and said, "Everything will work out, all right?"

Scott nodded. "Yeah, I - I just wanted to say sorry. For lying to you and Dakota and taking advantage of your friendship with Kit and Jeremy and --"

"I understand why you did it," Mary said. "No harm done. Emily's a tough nut to crack, but if she trusts you, well, that's all I need to know."

"What about Jeremy and Kit's friend Tim?" They were close to New York, and Scott's plan had yet to properly coalesce in his mind. "If you girls put yourselves out some money to get tickets to his show --"

Mary cut him off with a shake of her head. "Don't worry. We planned on scoring cheap matinee tickets today or tomorrow so Tim wouldn't have advance warning of our attendance. If we don't go to his show, he'll never know."

Scott sighed. "I'm sorry. You were probably looking forward to it."

"Don't sweat it," Mary said. "We have bigger fish to fry now, don't we?"

Scott winced at her use of the word "we" but decided not to tell her that the girls wouldn't be coming along for the mission.

"Kit and Jeremy are our friends, and it's in our vested interest if we get them back." Mary glanced across the room to where Dakota continued to loom over Emily. "I think I need to offer some assistance."

Logan slunk out of the bathroom, a damp towel thrown across his shoulders. "All yours, Slim."

As Scott readied himself for the day, he tried to mentally prepare himself for what was going to happen. There was no guarantee that Dr. McTaggert would be able to restore them. Scott had no plans for what to do if such was the case, other than running as far from Logan as possible so as to avoid the man's resulting wrath. He closed his eyes against the scalding water of the shower and took a deep breath. If they failed, Kit died and Scott would be stuck in a human body forever.

As he climbed out of the shower and wiped the steam of the mirror, he stared into Kit's blue eyes and wondered if being in a human body was so bad.

Then he remembered that Kit's body was just as doomed as his own, if not on a slower schedule, and he went back to planning.

They had to succeed.

***

Scott guided the van into New York. The familiar streets and places were comforting compared to the stiff silence of Logan in the passenger seat. In the back of the van, the girls were engaged in a rowdy game of Tetris on the DS's.

"You want to play Jer - Logan?" Dakota asked.

"No thanks," he said gruffly. "Video games aren't my thing."

Something in Scott's chest tightened in anticipation when they made it into New York City itself.

"So what's the plan?" Emily asked, poking her head between the front seats.

"No fair!" Mary cried. "She can talk and win at the same time?"

"We'll have to park and walk to meet our contact," Scott said.

Emily nodded. "All right. Call if you need backup."

Scott had sent an email to Dr. McTaggert that morning, informing her that they could meet in the city to discuss their problem. Once they were nearer to the middle city, Scott could call her and they could talk face-to-face.

"We shouldn't need any for the good doctor," Scott said. He guided the car toward one of the Worthington Industries buildings on the outskirts of the city that Warren had given him the parking code to and parked the van.

Emily hopped out and stretched her legs, and the other two girls followed.

"So...what now?" Mary asked.

"Logan and I have to go meet our friend. If you girls want, you go shopping - there are some interesting stores on this block," Scott said. "We'll call you when it's time to meet back here."

Dakota and Mary nodded and turned to go. Before she followed, Emily said,

"And if you don't call after, say, two hours, we should call the cops?"

"We'll call," Logan said. He turned and headed for the elevator.

Scott hurried after him. As soon as they were ought of sight of the girls, he used Kit's cellphone to call Dr. McTaggert. Kitty would have to wipe important numbers off of there before Kit got the thing back. Poor Kitty would have to do a lot of work when this was over.

Logan was oppressively silent in the other corner of the elevator. Scott flipped the cellphone shut and said,

"Two blocks west, one block south."

"That sounds like the Cyke we all know and love." Logan's voice held only vestiges of the Wolverine sarcasm that Scott remembered from pre-mission jitters. Scott didn't have a reply to that. Instead, he stared around at the city signs, the buildings and cars and people, drinking in the bright colors for what may have been the last time.

Both of them walked fast as a force of habit, and they reached their destination much more quickly than they would have had the girls been with them. Scott was about to turn the corner and face down Dr. McTaggert, ready to implement the first stages of their plan, and then Logan caught him by the wrist.

"We have to talk about this."

There was no way Scott could have misunderstood the pain and determination in those eyes. "Now?"

"Yes, now, before we get our bodies back and everything changes."

"Does not being in our own bodies somehow make this right or better?" Scott should have been ashamed at how cold his voice was, but he couldn't bring himself to care. He wanted his body back so he had at least one thing familiar before he stepped into his old life and tried to make sense of a world without the Professor.

Logan closed his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. "No, but it makes things more complicated. Once you get back to the school everyone's going to want to sweep you away, the one who returned from the dead, and you'll avoid me forever. We have to sort this out now."

"What is there to sort out? Your flirtations with my fiancee were elementary-school pigtail-pulling to cover your desire to have my attention. You have my attention. I will be hyperaware of you whenever you're near, and still aware whenever you're not. You have achieved your end. Let me make mine, before people start to die." Scott moved to pull away, but Logan tightened his grip.

"Is it so strange that I might care about you?"

"No. I care about you as well, as a comrade and a field leader," Scott said.  
"Anything else is --"

"False? Inappropriate? Unwelcome?"

"Yes."

Logan's eyes darkened. He tugged Scott closer and searched his eyes - Kit's eyes. "What are you afraid of?"

"Everything."

"That doesn't sound like the Cyke we all know and love."

Scott swallowed. "Maybe that Cyke is dead."

"I think," Logan said, reaching up to cup the back of Scott's skull and drag him even closer, "that he is very much alive."

Their lips met, and Scott's entire world shook apart. He moaned and allowed himself to be dragged flush against Logan's body. Logan's fingers tangled in his hair, and another arm locked around his waist, driving the breath from his body.

"When I switched your bodies, this wasn't the result I had in mind."

The words hit Scott like a shock of cold water. He and Logan sprang apart and spun to face the stranger.

The telepath was young, not more than twenty, and had flaming red hair. Distantly, Scott wondered if it was a redheaded thing, being a telepath. The young man smirked, and his smile full of razor-blade sharpness. He smoked a cigarette that smelled heavily of cloves, and he wore a long military-green coat that clashed horribly with his hair.

Scott blinked. It was the first time in a long time that colors had clashed to him. Usually he was so swept up in just color itself that everything looked wonderful.

The telepath smirked, and Scott slapped up a mental shield, cursing himself for having forgotten what Jean taught him.

"You shouldn't have switched their bodies at all," Dr. McTaggert said as she swung around the corner on her crutches.

Scott and Logan turned to her.

"Dr. McTaggert," Scott said.

She nodded. "I am. Which of you is which?"

"As fate would have it, once again the Wolverine has the stronger body," Scott said, and his tone was terribly dry.

Logan didn't seem to notice. He had a murderous glare fixed on the telepath and his hands curled into fists.

"I wouldn't," the telepath said. He grinned again. "Professor X might make you think you're a five-year-old girl. I can put you in her body. Which do you prefer?"

"Schuldig," Dr. McTaggert said sharply. "You will restore them. Now."

Schuldig - was that a German name? - took a drag off his cigarette. He had cat-green eyes, and they were full of caprice. "Can't."

Logan cocked his fist, and Scott knew that if he'd been in his own body his claws would have been out and already strained with blood.

"How did you do it?" Scott asked. "I thought I was dead."

That seemed to appeal to the Schuldig's ego. "Whoever put you in stasis was at least as good a telepath as me. But you were hardly dead. And I had a toy help me out."

"Cerebro," Logan hissed.

One green eye winked. "Bingo! Two points to the big brutish one." Another sly grin slid across his features. "I should say ten points for managing to lay it on uptight over here not once but three whole times when he spent a year of unconscious with 'Jean' on his mind."

It was Scott who punched Schuldig in the face.

Or tried.

He blinked, and half a second later Schuldig was already in front of him, too close, pistol drawn.

"Now now," Schuldig drawled, "you forget that I'm a telepath and you're nothing but flatscan humans."

"Stand down," Dr. McTaggert ordered.

"I want to play." His voice was like a whiny child's.

"Stand down or I will bring you down." Even though Dr. McTaggert leaned heavily on her crutches, Scott believed every word she said.

Another weird blink wherein Scott felt telepathy slice through his mental shields - as sharp as Schuldig's razorblade smile - and then Schuldig was back behind Dr. McTaggert, shaggy red head down as if he were a deferential bodyguard. Maybe he was.

"I'll meet you at the school," Dr. McTaggert says. "I'll call ahead to Dr. McCoy and ask about his mental patient."

"Mental patient?" Logan asked. Suspicion dawned on his face, and opened his mouth to ask another question, but Scott nodded his assent to Dr. McTaggert and turned away. He fished Kit's cellphone out of his pocket flipped it open, ready to call the girls.

"She trusted us too easily," Logan said.

"I'm sure Schuldig confirmed our identities." Scott searched for Dakota's number, as she was most likely to answer.

"That's the third time you've kissed me back," Logan said in a low voice.

Scott's stride didn't falter. "And the last."

"I don't believe you."

"I don't make promises I don't intend to keep," Scott said.

Logan grinned this time, and his expression was unsettlingly similar to Schuldig's. "The road to hell is paved with --"

"Un-bought stuffed dogs." Scott pressed the button to dial Dakota's number.

Logan blinked, confused at the seeming non-sequitur, and Scott spoke to Dakota.

"The girls are on their way back to the van," Scott said.

"How did you and Jeannie ever date if you're so damned stubborn?" Logan asked, voice rough with frustration.

Scott smiled grimly. "Because I'm so damned stubborn."

Logan slewed him a sidelong look. "I don't understand you."

Another grim smile. "Exactly."

They wandered through the roads. Scott's feet took him through alleys and by-ways that he was surprised he remembered with his eyes open. Logan followed, wary of their seedy surroundings. A small burst of triumph curled through Scott when they stepped out of the dingy alleyways and onto the high street where the shops and Worthington office building were. They spotted the girls clustered next to the entrance of the parking garage.

And then Scott heard music.

A boy's voice, and gentle guitar chords.

_"...I'm scared to know I'm always on your mind..._  
Even the best fall down sometimes.  
Even the wrong words seem to rhyme.  
Out of the doubt that fills my mind  
I somehow find that you and I collide..." 

"You're such a sap," Emily was saying as the two men drew near.

"Shut up," Mary muttered, and dug an elbow into her ribs.

Dakota hummed softly along to the song, picking up a gentle harmony line.

Logan craned his neck to peer over their shoulders, and Scott, heart pounding, did the same.

The boy sitting beside the entrance to the parking garage had tousled dark hair and a blindfold tied over his eyes. Even beneath the grime on his face he was pretty, with high cheekbones and a lovely pink mouth. He played the guitar deftly, fingers long and dexterous. All three girls were smiling at him as if he were a cute puppy or kitten.

Scott swallowed hard and stepped back.

"You meet your doctor friend?" Emily asked quietly without looking at him.

"Yeah."

"Let Dakota and Mary enjoy their song, and then we can go."

Scott nodded mutely. He wanted to look away, but he couldn't.

The song ended, and Mary and Dakota tossed a few coins into the boy's open guitar case. Someone had set an apple in the boy's guitar case as well; Scott suspected that was Emily's handiwork.

"You're very good," Dakota said to the boy.

He smiled and tuned his guitar. "Thank you."

"Time to go," Logan said gruffly. The anger in his voice was all too familiar. That tone meant Wolverine wanted to rip someone's spine out. In this case, he was probably after Schuldig's. Logan began herding the others toward the elevator.  
Scott lingered behind, and as soon as they were out of earshot he knelt beside the boy.

"Hey kid, do you need anything? Food? A knife?"

A demure smile crossed the boy's lips and he reached out to curl a hand around Scott's wrist.

"Sure, I'll take anything you give me, if you need something I got in return."

The implication hit Scott like a flash of sparks and he jerked back. "No, that's not what I meant." Horror settled into the pit of his stomach. "Really, I want to help."

The boy sat back, mouth set in a hard line. "I'm not buying it. No one gives anything for free."

"Sometimes people like you and me have to help each other out," Scott said.

The boy sneered. "You and I are nothing alike. I can smell you from here - you're clean and rich and probably damnably pretty."

"You're not one to talk. And you must not have always been blind, to know what pretty is, or how to scorn it," Scott said.

The boy's jaw clenched, but he said nothing.

Scott knew he was right.

"Think about it." Scott handed the boy a slip of paper with the school's address written on it, then stood up and headed into the garage.

"Took you long enough," Logan grumbled.

Scott slid into the driver's seat. "Let's go." He revved the engine, and they pulled out of the garage.

***

"Westchester Chapter of Jehovah's Witnesses?" Mary asked.

In a low voice, Dakota said, "Hooray! We've done Jenova's work!"

Emily added, "Praise Hojo!"

"Jehovah, not Jenova," Mary said absently. Then she seemed to catch on to the obscure allusion and glared. "Nerds!"

The girls giggled.

Dr. McTaggert and Schuldig had arrived only minutes before them and were still standing at the gate.

"So nice of you to get here so soon, given your unexpected delay." Schuldig cast Scott another one of those razorblade smiles.

Scott reinforced his mental shields and moved to stand beside Dr. McTaggert.

"I just wanted to thank you for doing this, Doctor," he began.

She cut him off with a sharp shake of her head. "Don't. Schuldig has needed to learn a lesson about misusing his powers for a long time."

Scott nodded.

Then, voice bleaker, Dr. McTaggert said, "I know how much Charles cared for you, as if you were his own son. It - it would make him happy, to see you restored."

Scott's throat closed unexpectedly, and he could do was nod again. Being back at the one place he could ever properly call home, after thinking he was dead - did people usually get second chances like this?

Storm came to meet them at the gates. Mary and Dakota gaped at the stately woman as she approached, white hair fanning around her face in a light breeze. Her smile was serene and welcoming.

"Dr. McTaggert, so kind of you to assist Henry in his work." Storm smiled and pressed a button to open the gate.

Dr. McTaggert inclined her head politely. "Thank you for your hospitality, Miss Munroe. This is one of my students, Schuldig. He is a telepath. And these are some human friends of ours."

Storm's expression turned slightly wary, but she never lost the air of a gracious hostess. "Please, do come in. Don't mind the children - today is the last day of school before fall break, and they're a little energetic." She led them up the driveway toward the main doors. Students lingered in the hallways outside of the classrooms, chatting boisterously. Scott named them off in his head as he saw them, but said nothing.

Behind him, Emily, Dakota, and Mary were openly fascinated, not only at some of the brazenly mutant children, but also at the magnificence of the old mansion. Scott was sure he was playing the part of awed stranger well, the sight of the familiar halls and rooms wrenching in his chest as he drank everything in greedily. This was the first time he had seen his home in color.

"Henry is just this way. We've been keeping Logan in his own room for his own safety, with the assistance of Peter and Remy."

"Monsieur LeBeau?" Dr. McTaggert asked.

Storm nodded. "It seems that Logan has reverted to a previous state, before his Weapon X training, and so he has no mental shields that would protect him from Remy's charm."

A growl rumbled in Logan's chest. Storm cast him a strange look, and Scott dug an elbow into his ribs.

They followed her up the familiar path to the teachers' wing. Hank was already there, dressed in a lab coat and having a low, hurried conversation with Peter. Scott could see the door to the bedroom he had shared with Jean.

"How's the Wolverine coming along?" Storm asked.

"Still insisting he's this Jeremy Andrews character. Kitty couldn't find any records on him, so we're thinking that, if it's his original name, it may be on records so old no one has bothered to archive them electronically," Hank said. "And he's finally learned to control the claws."

Peter rubbed a hand over his slashed t-shirt ruefully.

"Thank you for coming, Dr. McTaggert," he said. "Logan is a good man, but --"

"Let me out, dammit!" There was a crash from behind the closed door.

"Non, homme, calm down, oui?"

Scott recognized Remy's voice.

The door flew open a moment later.

"Some assistance, s'il te plait," Remy said. His brown hair was disheveled, and there were faint scratches on his face.

Mary and Dakota squeaked when Peter went into steel form and stepped into the room.

"Allow me," Dr. McTaggert said, following behind him.

Schuldig trailed after her, looking put out at his prank being forced to a close.

"Some body," Emily murmured.

All three girls stared at the hulking figure that was Wolverine, shirtless, torso corded with muscle, adamantine claws fully extended and aimed at Hank and Peter, both of whom looked unfazed.

"Stand down," Peter said.

"No! I'm not Logan or whatever! My name is Jeremy Andrews and I'm twenty-one-years old and I'm a freakin' English major, all right? Let me go!"

"That's our Jeremy," Dakota said, and she smiled.

He must have heard his name, for he turned. His eyes nearly fell out of his head, and the claws retracted.

"You!" he spluttered, pointing at Logan, who looked like Jeremy. "Are you Logan? Give me back my body, bastard!"

Hank blinked and turned, and he noticed Scott and the others for the first time.

"Dr. McTaggert, what's going on?" he asked.

"Schuldig, fix it now," she said.

He pouted and tossed his head, shaking his long red hair in everyone's face. Mary coughed and spluttered when she got a mouthful of red hair.

"Before, I used Cerebro. I need to use it now," he said.

Understanding dawned in Storm's eyes first. "Your telepath - he switched Logan and this boy - Jeremy."

Jeremy-in-Logan's-body threw his hands up. "See? I'm _not_ some sort of head case. I want my body back and I want to go home. Apparently _my_ friends are reasonable enough to believe your Logan friend, and they came to rescue me."

Dakota reached into her jacket and fished out a shiny black device. "We brought your DS and your iPod."

She squeaked when Jeremy lunged at her and drew her into an enthusiastic hug.

"Ow! Jeremy! Cut it out! You're way stronger in that body --!" She sounded short of breath.

Jeremy leapt back. "Sorry. I, uh, this body is weird and complicated. It's full of metal! But I'm strong enough to be fast about it. It's sorta cool." And then the claws unsheathed, causing everyone else to step back. "But sorta dangerous. I'd rather have my own body back."

"Down to Cerebro it is, then," Hank said.

Logan and Jeremy would have run all the way down to Cerebro if they didn't have to keep up appearances of normalcy for the students.

Scott paused a moment too long beside Jean's lab, but then Storm was keying in the code to Cerebro. She used the assistant headmaster's code. Scott's code. The doors hissed open, and those who had never seen Cerebro before peered in eagerly.

"The rest of you will have to stay outside," Schuldig said. Dr. McTaggert stood forward.

"I'm coming with you," she said. "I know how to behave myself in this machine."

"Oh?" Schuldig asked.

Dr. McTaggert said dryly, "I was married to the man who built it."

Scott had the distinct pleasure of seeing that razorblade smirk slide off of Schuldig's face before Logan and Jeremy hauled him into the machine. Then the metal doors slid closed, and Scott remembered to breathe.

"Think he can fix his little prank?" Emily whispered in his hear.

"He better," Scott said, "or they'll both kill him."

Seconds later, the doors hissed open, and everyone heard Wolverine's familiar voice.

"You ready for what's coming to you, Bub?"

Definitely Logan and not Jeremy.

Jeremy stepped out, patting himself down as if checking that everything was still in place. A smile crossed his face, one that lit up his sloe-dark eyes, and Scott had to look away. Those weren't Logan's eyes anymore.

"Did you guys drive all the way out here?" Jeremy asked. "That must have taken like a week! I knew you'd come get me."

"That's what friends are for," Emily said. She reached out, and she and Jeremy exchanged a complicated handshake. Then he drew her into a rough hug, and patted her head like she was his little sister.

"Thanks, guys," he said. "Being in Logan's body wasn't easy."

"Yours wasn't a cake walk either," Logan growled from where he had Schuldig pinned up against a wall, claws at his throat.

"Now, Logan," Dr. McTaggert said reasonably.

"Use Cerebro to fix Scott," Logan said.

The name hung in the air like a crystal vase pushed off the edge of the table and moments from shattering.

"Scott?" Storm asked.

"Scott's dead," Hank said.

"Did we ever find his body?" Logan didn't look at them.

Remy blinked. "No, but - you found his glasses. He would never go anywhere without his glasses."

Schuldig threw up his hands helplessly. "Body's too weak for me to do it from a distance. Get me the body, and I'll get you your Scott."

Storm whirled to stare at Scott and the girls.

"Which one are you?"

"He didn't put you in a girl's body, did he?" Remy asked.

Storm studied each of their faces, as if she could tell just by looking who he was. Suddenly she moved to embrace Emily with a cry of,

"Scott!"

Emily dodged aside. "Whoa - hey! Not your guy." She cast Scott a look. "Do I look like you?"

Storm turned to him then, considering. She laughed softly. "Of course. It seems that it's the telepath's sense of humor, to give you pretty face no matter what."

Scott's jaw tightened at "pretty." He knew full well what he looked like, and he despised the connotations that came with being pretty. He'd spent too much time on the streets to see anything but avarice and lust in convincing people to trade on their looks.

"Ro," he said carefully.

She was thrown by how young he looked in Kit's body.

"We thought you were dead."

"I thought so, too."

Storm's eyes promised a long conversation sometime later.

"Where is Scott's body?" Hank asked.

"Mutant Cure group found it with Jeremy's friend wandering around in it," Logan said, and it was terribly disconcerting, hearing people talk about Scott's body as if it were nothing more than a reanimated corpse. Which, perhaps, it was.

"We've located it and we're going to retrieve it," Logan said.

"Of course," Storm said. She turned to Hank. "Get Kurt down here, then put the school on low-level alert. Have Bobby, Rogue, Peter, Kitty, and Jubilee supervise the younger students. I'll go fire up the jet."

Logan shook his head. "No. Slim and I are going on our own."

A series of skeptical gazes ran over Kit's body from head to toe.

Scott said, "Just because I'm human in this body doesn't mean I'm any less capable with a weapon or at tactics."

"Of course," Hank began. "It's just - how much of your tactical and reflex skill was part of your mutation?"

"We'll find out, won't we?"

"I'm coming with you," Emily said.

Mary and Dakota began to protest.

Scott met her gaze, and understanding passed between them.

"You can fire up the jet, though," Logan said. "I'm not spending another minute in that heap of metal you girls call a van."

"Hey!" Mary cried. "Don't you go insulting my Widowmaker!"

Logan arched an eyebrow at the name.

"It _is_ a Widowmaker when _she_ drives it," Dakota said. Mary scowled at her too.

"I'll take the ladies back up to the school, oui?" Remy turned his charming smile on Mary and Dakota.

Logan nodded. To Scott he said, "Show's all yours now. Let's do it."

"I'll go get the Blackbird ready," Scott said. "You take Emily to get what she wants in the way of weapons or armor."

"Our weapons are our mutations," Logan said.

"I'm sure Remy has something spare lying around." Scott turned and headed for the hangar.

"I have everything I need with me, actually," Emily said. "But sure - I'll see what you've got. A girl can never have too many grenades, after all."

Scott stepped into the hangar, into its familiar coolness, and closed his eyes. For the first time, he was alone, back in his home.

Was it still his home, now that Jean and the Professor were gone?

Then he took a deep breath and opened his eyes. The Blackbird stood, sleek and fast, waiting for her favorite pilot's skilled hands. Scott reached out and ran a hand over the metal, marveling in the beauty of true blackness without red tint.

He ascended into the cockpit and headed straight for the controls. His mind remembered, even if this body didn't, the smooth sequence of waking up the magnificent machine, and he reveled in the sound of the engines coming to life.

He was Cyclops now, and he had a machine. In mere hours he would have his body back, and he would truly be Cyclops once and for all, the stoic leader of the X-Men who was forever hidden behind a barrier of red.

Scott knew better than any of them that the ruby quartz protected him from them much more than it protected them from him.

"You're going to need these."

Scott turned.

Logan stood at the top of the ramp, Scott's visor resting on his open palm.

"Ready to go, Cyclops?"

Emily clambered up the ramp as well.

Scott blinked.

She looked like a veritable walking arsenal, with knives and guns strapped to every limb, her armored torso criss-crossed with bands of ammo. And still she wore those pretty hairpins. Scott supposed that, if nothing else, they kept her hair out of her face.

"What government do you work for, anyway?" Scott asked.

Emily smiled. "No government. Just really protective older brothers."

"And what army do they work for?"

"Navy," Emily said.

"Of course." Logan looked faintly amused. Then he straightened up. "Go in back and see if they have any spare med kits, all right?"

Something unreadable sparkled in Emily's eyes, but then she practically bounded away with a happy chirp of,

"I love my Desert Eagle!"

Scott ran through the last of the start-up sequence, centering himself. Even in a human body, he was Cyclops, the field leader of the X-Men, and he had a mission to complete.

"I told you that it didn't matter what bodies we were in," Logan said, and Scott found himself being pressed against the control panel being kissed.

He groaned. The pre-battle adrenaline rush made him easy to catch off-guard with a kiss. Jean had known that well enough, but it sure as hell wasn't Jean kissing him now. It was a rough kiss, all bruising lips and clashing teeth, tongues twining, bodies arched together almost painfully, as if they pressed against each other long enough and hard enough they could sink into each other and fuse into one, breathing each other and living each other and --

"Yup, med kits, fully stocked, for all sorts of things!"

Scott jerked away, scrubbing his mouth with the back of one hand reflexively. With a cold look at Logan, the cold look that pierced others even from behind his glasses, he said, "Let's go," and opened the hangar.


	10. Chapter 10

The Emily Scott thought he knew probably would have hovered beside the pilot's chair and chatted endlessly as they flew through the air, offering a witty running commentary on all they saw as they went. However, the Emily sitting behind Scott's chair was not the Emily he usually knew. Of course, whichever Emily she might have been, she would have been more than perceptive enough to sense the horrible air of _brooding_ that emanated from Logan's co-pilot chair, so she remained mostly quiet, asking a few questions about where Scott learned to pilot, where the Professor had gotten himself an access-restricted military weapon, and a few additional questions.

"Now that you've brought me along and didn't really intend to use me in the first place, what's up with the epi pen and the unholy ration of peanut chocolate bars?"

The look Logan shot him said he had been thinking the same thing.

"Our plan is still basically the same. I don't know how well Kit's body can stand up under combat stress, but I have a basic sense of how well he can run --" Logan let out an annoyed snort at this, which Scott duly ignored -- "and I know he can fairly stealthy as well, so I'm still going in and sending my body into anaphylactic shock and then hiding. Security will decrease on the outside as they bring in guards to supervise the transfer, and then he'll be in the infirmary, which has access from the outside so they can transfer patients in emergencies. Hopefully the plan will work better now that you're here to back Logan up."

"Hey, Bub," Logan said sharply, "I'm _Wolverine_. I can work alone."

Scott said, tone carefully neutral, "We have to try not to kill them if at all possible. If Emily's here with some support fire, it'll be easier for you to wound without killing."

"I think," Logan said dryly, "I can use these just fine," and he unsheathed his claws.

"What kind of metals are those?" Emily asked.

"One you've never seen before," Logan said, and sheathed the claws again.

Emily nodded amiably. "You're probably right. While I do believe that you can do more than your fair share of damage with those, you're probably the only one who'll be strong enough to carry Kit in Scott's body, which would leave me and Scott to get us back out. In the alternative, of course, we could just completely and utterly destroy everyone on our way in so the way out would be a cakewalk, but once Kit is in anaphylactic shock we have a time limit. Bets are their doctors won't think that a mutant could have something as ordinary as an allergy, so even if they do have an epi pen on hand they won't jab him with it and solve the problem."

Logan's answering growl told Scott that Emily was right and far too reasonable about it for her own good.

"What are you, a doctor or something?"

"Hardly. I'm just a college student."

Logan cast a glance over Emily's armed-to-the-teeth self and said, "Sure. Just a college student."

Scott guided the plane through the air smoothly. It occurred to him that perhaps they ought to have brought Schuldig along to make him fend off any United States Air Force enforcers roaming the sky, but the really didn't want to have to look at that red-haired menace right now.

"You can shoot to wound, right?" he asked Emily without looking at her.

"Sure," she said. "Do it all the time."

Logan whipped around to look at her. "You said you weren't military."

"And I'm sure Scott told you that, given who I seem to be versus what I know, I probably wouldn't tell you if I was in a military unit or not, would I?"

"You as good as told us right there," Logan said.

Emily just shrugged and continued gazing at the sky as it sped by. "And maybe I'm just a college kid who plays too many video games and has really great hand-eye coordination. By the way, Scott, you wondered about Kit's combat capabilities. I think, if you find yourself a sword of some sort, or a pair of daggers, you'd be surprised what Kit has lingering in his muscle memory. I'd say the same of Jeremy, but his body isn't here right now."

Logan raised his eyebrows. "Swords and daggers?"

"Do remember that Jeremy is the proud owner of a very fine katana. He's not the sort of obnoxious fool who would avail himself of so fine a weapon without being able to use it properly." Emily folded her hands in her lap primly and turned away from Logan, which caused him to growl.

Scott remembered the mass of half-finished chain-mail pieces of armor that littered the floor of Kit's basement and wondered who all these students really were.

Between Scott and Logan's combined combat experience they managed to agree on a spot to land the Blackbird that was suitably close to the Mutant Cure headquarters so as to make rescuing Kit-as-Scott efficient but was sufficiently far enough away that the Mutant Cure freaks wouldn't hear them coming.

Then all three of them slunk through the mass of trees - oriented by Scott's pin-point sense of direction - and hovered on the edge of the clearing that house the infamous Mutant Cure headquarters.

Young men in cammo armed with assault rifles and grenades formed a thick barrier around the exterior of the building, but Emily, Scott, and Logan had taken pains to memorize the blueprints of the place and they could see enough of their target to orient themselves.

"And how, exactly, did you plan on sneaking past all those men?" Emily asked.  
Scott smiled grimly. "Wouldn't you like to know? Wait for my signal."  
They were all armed with radio communicators as well.  
They did quick radio checks, and then Scott vanished into the undergrowth.

***

He didn't want to tell the other two that he really had no plan as to how to get into the building, except for one, and it wasn't pretty.

"How unpretty is not pretty?" a nasal voice drawled right beside Scott's ear.  
He jumped and spun around and found himself face-to-face with --

"The red-haired menace, at your service," Schuldig said, and he bowed deeply. When he straightened up, he wore a deeply amused grin.

"When did you get here?" Scott hissed.

"Same time as the rest of you," Schuldig said, and Scott noted the other young man's faint German accent. "It was simple enough to throw a telepathic suggestion over all of your minds and sit quietly at the back of the jet, unnoticed even by Logan's preternatural sense of smell." He reached into his hideous green jacket and drew out his gun. "I can't fix it so everyone in the building is completely blind to us. In their paranoia they have developed vague mental shields against telepathy, and rightly so." Schuldig's grin at that was disturbing. "I can, however, give both of us long enough to get into the building. From there, of course, it'll be all stealth."

"Why the hell did you come along? Can you even fight?" Scott demanded.

"Why I came along is of no consequence to you, really, other than the fact that you ended up in someone else's body, and I rather think I'm a fair sight more of a fighter than you are in the body." Again with the razorblade smile.

"Who are you?" Scott asked, this time without hostility.

"Have you ever heard of Rosenkruez?" Schuldig asked.

"You mean the Rosicrucians?" Scott said. He pondered at Schuldig's German pronunciation of the word.

"Not really." Schuldig chuckled dryly. "If you've never heard of Rosenkruez, I doubt you've ever heard of Schwarz."

"That's German for the color black," Scott said.

Schuldig smiled enigmatically. "There is that. Are you ready to go in, Michael Scott Summers?"

"No one calls me Michael anymore."

Schuldig stepped into the clearing and strolled toward the guards, cool as a cucumber.  
Scott had to swallow a yelp of horror before it escaped his lips, and then he realized that none of the guards were looking at Schuldig; indeed, none of the guards seemed to have noticed him.

Scott scrambled after Schuldig. As soon as they were in the building, Schuldig flattened himself against the wall and drew his gun. It was a classic combat pose, and Scott wondered if Rosenkreuz or Schwarz or whatever were paramilitary organizations.

Schuldig must have caught that thought and he chanced to throw a grin over his shoulder before he moved forward. He checked each corner with marked efficiency, and Scott suddenly wished that he had thought to borrow a gun from Emily. All he had was a couple of candybars, an epi pen, and his own fists.

Suddenly, stupidly, he really wanted a sword, or better than that, a pair of scimitars.

"How do you know where we're going?" Scott whispered.

"I can read your mind. Being dead for over a year really shot your shields," Schuldig replied.

There were a few close calls with guards and facility personnel, but Scott and Schuldig found the cell soon enough. Several horribly tense moments flashed by as Scott picked the lock while Schuldig hovered behind him, gun flashing in every possible approach direction.

Then the door was open, and they slipped into the room and closed the door quietly behind them.

Scott sucked in a deep breath at the sight of his own body curled pathetically on its side, pale. At a soft cough from Schuldig, Scott crossed the room and checked his body's vital signs. The soft beeping of medical monitors indicated, at the most, that Scott's body was barely alive.

"Kit," Scott said, and shook the other man's shoulder.

Kit came awake wildly and lashed out with one fist.

Typical Scott reflex.

"No, no," he whimpered. "Please, I'm not a mutant, I'm Kit West, I'm just a computer programmer. Please, let me go."

"Kit, we're here to get you out."

The sound of his own voice stilled the other man. "Who are you?"

Scott reached out and eased a hand over Kit's mouth. "Don't make any noise, all right? We sneaked in here, and we have to get you out."

Kit writhed, trying to dislodge Scott's hand.

"My name is Scott," he said. "I'm in your body, and you're in mine. We're here to get you out." Feeling guilt and trepidation wash over him in a wave of nausea, he unwrapped the candy bar and said, "Eat this. It's a candy bar. It'll give you a sugar rush and help you keep up with us as we escape."

He eased his hand off of Kit's mouth. Kit lunged for the candy bar and devoured in a few quick, vicious snaps.

"Do you have more?" he asked, voice hoarse. "I'm hungry, and they forget to feed me."

Scott stood back. "Not right now."

"We should go now," Schuldig said.

Kit's head whipped in Schuldig's direction. "Who's there?" And then he began to writhe.

Scott and Schuldig made it out of the cell and around the corner just before the alarms on the medical monitors went off.

"Move in now," Scott said.

"Affirmative," Emily said, and then Logan chimed in,

"We're going to have to wait a bit for the security to react."

"Acknowledged."

Scott and Schuldig slid into an empty room and watched as doctors in disheveled white coats streamed past. Soon after, guards - some of whom Scott remembered seeing from outside the facility - thundered down the corridor, and then an entire entourage wheeled the gurney bearing Kit back down the hall.

Schuldig poked his head out first as he would be able to avoid detection best. It didn't seem as if any other guards would return to guard Kit's cell any time soon, so Scott and Schuldig leap-frogged down the hall toward the infirmary.

The doctors were in a frenzied panic, hovering over Scott's body and checking monitors, checking vitals. One doctor had paddles ready to go and kept trying to call "clear," but the other doctors were having none of it.

The guards hovered behind the wall of doctors in a fit of useless anxiousness.

"On our way in," Logan said, and his voice was little more than a feral growl.

As if on cue, several of the guards jumped and began thundering out of the lab, much to the annoyance of the doctors.

Scott and Schuldig jerked back, waiting for the guards to go past. Then Scott popped back up. He didn't even spare the monitors a glance before he and Schuldig burst into the infirmary.

The doctors didn't stand a chance. Schuldig had deadly accurate aim and dropped three of them in three seconds. Scott shoved a couple of doctors aside and headed for Kit. One stab with the epi pen, and immediately Kit's breathing began to come easier.

"We have to go. Now," Schuldig said. Between Scott and Schuldig, they carried Kit toward the door and started down the hallway.

It was slow going, because Schuldig stopped and paused to peer into every cell.

Kit moaned.

"We don't have time for this," Scott said. "We have to hurry."

Static crackled over Scott's comm unit, and he heard Emily swearing in several different languages. Logan followed suit, and then there was the horrific sound of someone being gutted by adamantine claws.

"Not yet," Schuldig said. He paused and practically dropped his half of Kit and lunged for a door. He kicked it down - and Scott was surprised at the strength in that thin frame - and headed in. Moments later he emerged, bearing the unconscious form of a tall, dark-haired man.

"What the hell are you doing?" Scott cried. "We have to get out of here now."

The look Schuldig shot him would have floored any other man. "Did you think you were the only mutant taken?"

The man over Schuldig's shoulder stirred. "Wh-- what's going on?"

"We're getting you out of here," Schuldig said.

"Who are you?"

"No one you know," Schuldig said. "But I have a vested interest in your - well, nevermind."

Scott didn't know how Schuldig could talk and carry at the same time. He ignored Schuldig and concentrated on what he remembered of the blueprints of the building, searching for the nearest exit. Once they were under cover of the trees they could make their way to the Blackbird as necessary.

"Don't mind me," Schuldig said, voice deceptively light. "I can find my way with your mind as a bright, shining beacon."

Scott staggered slightly under the weight of his own body. Even though his body was emaciated and weak, it was still much heavier than he thought it ought to be, and much heavier than any one person ought to carry by himself.

"I should have known you came for some sort of self-serving reason," he grunted and turned the corner.

He didn't have to look back to see Schuldig's smirk.

"Did you actually think I cared about you lot or anything?"

Another left, another right, a risky forty feet down a corridor, two more rights and a left, and they would be breathing fresh, free air.

They could do it.

Scott's world turned white, then red.

Someone gave a shout of alarm, someone who sounded oddly like Schuldig. Scott thought that, if he had knees, they were probably buckling. And then all he felt was fire.

Someone was screaming. If Scott hadn't known better, he would have thought that was what someone dying in agony screamed like.

Most important was the fire.

Not the warm sticky stuff dripping down his face, or the dark eyes and worried face that swam into his field of vision. Not the arms gathering him up and pressing him against a warm, firm chest.

Not the heart beating rapidly, terrified, beneath his head.

Just the fire.

Scott's entire being was on fire.

And then his world went black.

***

Scott came to slowly, on his back on the cold floor of the Blackbird. Emily knelt beside him, face pale beneath her tan. She wiped at his face with a warm, damp washcloth that came away covered in blood.

"Did - did we make it?" he asked.

Emily nodded once, briefly.

"And - and we're on our way back to the school?"

Another nod.

"What happened?"

"Kit gets nosebleeds sometimes. From his headaches. They knock him down. Haven't you been taking your meds?" Emily frowned.

"What meds?" Scott asked. He hated how weak his voice - Kit's voice - sounded.

"I wrote down a list of them on the piece of paper I gave you back that very first day --" Emily shook her head and smoothed a hand over his hair, the gesture oddly gentle. "Logan about had a heart attack when you went down. Luckily for you, Schuldig can read even unconscious minds and is piloting right about now."

Scott tried to sit up. "Just because he can read my mind doesn't mean he has my reflexes." But a wave of dizziness washed over him and he let Emily lower him carefully back down to the floor.

"Just chill," Emily said. "We radioed ahead and Dr. McCoy and the others will be waiting for all of you."

"All of us?" Scott echoed.

"The other mutant Schuldig rescued," Emily said.

Scott strained to lift his head and he saw a dark-haired figure slumped over in one of the passenger seats. In his impatience, Schuldig had tied the safety straps around the body rather than strapping it in properly.

"Who is that?" Scott asked.

Emily huffed in amusement. "Schuldig gets a little tetchy when asked. But we did it, right? We got your body back."

"I got my body back too," someone said, and Scott's real voice sounded foreign to his ears, the way he heard it on a recording or on those rare occasions when he had to use a microphone.

"Yes, Kit, we did." Emily's tone turned weary.

Ignoring the body's scream of protest, Scott heaved himself up. He didn't protest when Emily slid in to sit behind him so he could rest against her.

Kit was curled on one of the other passenger seats; he'd managed to figure out the safety straps. He stared at Scott with unabashed blue eyes.

"Your friend Logan says sunlight powers your mutation, that since I've been out of the sun for long it was safe to open my eyes," Kit said. "Although he did make me look at the sky first for good measure." He reached up and rubbed his temples. "Keeping my eyes squeezed shut like that gave me a constant headache. How did you manage it?"

"Glasses," Scott said. "I wore glasses."

Kit's brow furrowed, and the expression was all wrong on Scott's face, but he was too busy staring at his own frail body to really care. "That's all it takes? A pair of glasses."

"Special glasses," Scott amended.

"Of course." Kit tilted his head to the side quizzically. "This is unreal. It's not even like looking in a mirror. It's like - watching a clone or something."

"You can't imagine how fun this has been for the others," Emily said.

That unfamiliar frown crossed Scott's face again as Kit asked, "Others?"

"Dakota and Mary," Emily said. "They came too. And Jeremy, after a fashion."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Kit asked.

"Think you were the only one who got the body-switch, Bub?" Logan had left the co-pilot seat, apparently deciding to trust Schuldig's telepathy. He crossed the cabin - and froze.

He stared at Kit as if he had never seen Scott in his life, and he hadn't, not really - no one but the professor had seen Scott's naked face, eyes open, without his glasses.

Kit squirmed under the older man's gaze. Almost compulsively, he reached up and swiped a hand over my face. "Do I have dirt on my face or something?"

Abruptly Logan looked away, and Scott saw something shuttered in his dark eyes. "You'll have to close your eyes soon. Apparently being back in the sunlight is healing you up fast, and there's no telling when the mutation will start to work again."

Faintly, Scott thought that Kit was remarkably well-recovered, considering he'd been slowly dying from lack of sunlight and going mad in another person's body for the past week. Maybe he was in shock.

Maybe, like Kitty had once said, he'd filled his weird-o-meter for the time being and nothing would faze him now.

Kit frowned at Scott. "Don't you know how long the normal vision lasts?"

"The Professor didn't like experimenting with my health," Scott said, and was ashamed at how angry his words sounded. When he and the Professor had first realized the limitation on Scott's power, Scott had wanted to explore it, to find some way to utilize it to live normally, and also to know his own limits if he were captured. After the fifth day the professor always made him stop, and Scott hated not knowing.

Emily smoothed a hand over his hair, and the gesture was sharply reminiscent of Jean. Scott sucked in a breath and closed his eyes. Emily snatched her hand away with a whispered, horrified, "Sorry."

Scott opened his eyes to apologize, to tell her he didn't mean it.

Kit said, "I thought you didn't like to touch people."

Emily said nothing, merely shifted, and Scott winced.

"I really appreciate you letting me half-sit on you and all, but the ammo belt is sort of uncomfortable --"

Emily squeaked out another "Sorry!" and hastily disarmed herself. Kit watched the process in mild horror.

"You've been holding out on us," he said. "You can use a gun."

"Just because I can use a gun doesn't mean I'm any good at Halo," Emily said primly. She stroked Scott's hair cautiously and said, "Is that better?"

Scott nodded.

Kit and Logan, who were determinedly not looking at each other, stared at the pair huddled on the floor.

Just as the tension was about to break into some sort of verbal argument - Scott could see Logan's lower lip curling in a snarl - Schuldig spoke.

"Do you want me to talk to your commanding base, or will my voice annoy them?"

"Your voice annoys anyone who hears it," Logan snapped. He crossed the cabin swiftly and plopped into the copilot seat.

"Wolverine to base," he said.

Another voice crackled over the radio. "Emily, is that you?"

Kit perked up at Mary's voice.

"No, doofus, he just said it was Wolverine," Jeremy said. "Did you guys get Scott's body back? Is Kit okay?"

"Is Scott okay?" Dakota chimed in. "He's been looking a little pale the last day or so, and it occurred to me that he hasn't been taking Kit's pills."

"Scott's fine," Logan said, a little too abruptly. "Can I speak to Storm?"

"You may," Mary said, and Scott felt bad when he was relieved at her voice.

"Wolverine, Cyclops, do you read me?"

"Actually, beautiful, I'm piloting," Schuldig said.

"What's wrong with Scott?" Storm demanded.

"Nothing the little lady can't handle," Schuldig said, his tone amused.

Logan growled.

"I've plucked the landing procedures from his mind. Keep the eager admirers at bay while I take the Blackbird down, all right?"

"Understood," Storm said, and then another voice broke over the radio.

"Schuldig, you recalcitrant teenager, you can be sure the other telekinetics will see to it that you are thoroughly grounded for this stunt you pulled." Dr. McTaggert sounded positively pleasant.

In return, Schuldig sounded positively predatory. "If you think you really want to do that, dear doctor, go ahead." He landed the Blackbird smoothly, and Scott wondered if one could really learn a skill through telepathy or if Schuldig had other skills of his own (he probably did), and as soon as the hatch was open the others stormed the jet.

Mary swooped down on Kit and dragged him into a crushing hug.

"You stupid idiot!"

"Hey," Kit protested, breathless with the force of her embrace, "it's not like I did this on purpose."

"I worried about you, kid," Mary said.

Dakota stood back respectfully. Then she sneaked a glance at Scott and said, "You're pretty attractive." To Kit she said, "Sorry, but Scott's got prettier blue eyes."

Kit opened his mouth to reply, but all that came out was a terrified yelp and then he ducked his head, eyes squeezed shut tightly.

The power was back.

Storm reached out with a gentle hand. "Here, let me guide you."

Scott saw the tension that quivered in his own frame, saw that Kit didn't trust anyone any more than Scott himself had when his power first manifested.

"Someone needs to help him," Emily said, nodding toward the unconscious fellow tied into the passenger chair. Remy and Peter moved to get him.

Hank helped Scott to his feet. "What's happened?" Then his nostrils twitched, and he turned an accusing glance at Emily. "This body is ill! And he has -- impossible! Why didn't you tell me?"

Emily stood up, wincing at the stiffness of her legs, and then cast an unreadable look in Kit's direction. "Let's just finish this, shall we?"

***

Dr. McTaggert and a pair of telekinetics frog-marched Schuldig all the way to Cerebro; he wore his annoying smirk the entire time.

"Into the machine with all of them," Schuldig said.

"All?" Peter asked, indicating the unconscious figure he held.

"Doesn't there need to be another body for this to work?" Mary asked.

"Usually," Schuldig said, and there was something hard in his eyes. "Now, into the machine."

Scott guided Kit towards Cerebro, and Peter propped his burden so the man was seated upright against one of the walls.

The doors closed.

Something wrenched in Scott's chest when Schuldig turned away to power up Cerebro and put on the helmet. That was the Professor's - no one else was meant to wear it. The last time Scott had seen someone other than the professor - someone tall, slender, redheaded - wearing that helmet, he'd been terrified.

He was terrified again, but for an entirely different reason.

Schuldig had been poking at the machine, but suddenly he yanked off the helmet and stormed over to where Kit had been standing with his face buried in his hands, shoulders quivering. He lifted his head at the sound of the rapid approach of footsteps.

"What - what's going on?"

Scott stared as Schuldig dropped to his knees and slapped the other man awake, a little harder than was strictly necessary.

The man came awake sharply, anger on his face.

"What the hell - who are you?"

"The man who rescued you," Schuldig said. He smirked. "I like it when you look angry like that."

"The hell?" the man cried.

Schuldig cast a smile over his shoulder at Scott, though the expression was too pained to be a proper smile. "We're psychics, Michael. Bodies matter." And then he leaned down and kissed the man on the mouth.

The man went still for a moment, then began to struggle weakly.

Scott wondered if his first kiss with Logan had looked like that, agonized and longing on one side, terrified and frantic on the other.

Schuldig pulled back, and the other man wiped his mouth.

Schuldig's expression hardened, and he stomped back to the control panel.

"You might want to close your eyes," he said.

Scott obeyed.

***

He knew this feeling. Formless, weightless.

Free.

Utterly free in a way he couldn't begin to describe. Maybe this was what Ororo felt like when she flew on the wind. But this was different. Scott wasn't anything or anyone. He could drift on the astral plane, floating in this blissful haze until he dissipated and was no more, until he vanished and was no longer Scott.

Then he was dragged down into a steel cage and the trapdoor slammed shut.

***

"Don't open your eyes," Schuldig said.

Scott hitched in a breath, and his body ached all over.

"You had a seizure due to anaphylactic shock and you've been semi-starved for a week," Schuldig said, and he sounded closer. "Of course you're in pain."

"Stay out of my head," Scott snapped.

"Hey, it's not my fault if being dead for a year totally ruined your mental shields."

"I - you haven't been taking my pills, have you?" Kit's voice. No longer Scott's.

"Emily wrote them down on a piece of paper, but I must have overlooked them. Knowing her, she probably brought some spares," Scott said, automatically resuming his role of leader and comforter. It had been so long since he'd worked that role properly - he'd been a wreck after Jean, after --

"You're right," Kit muttered.

Scott felt a hand on his elbow. "Here, let me help you." It was Kit.

Scott heard the hiss of compressed air as the doors to the underground corridor hissed open.

"These are yours, old friend," Hank said, and pressed a pair of heavy glasses into Scott's hands.

He put them on but didn't open his eyes. Instead, he savored the memories of all the colors he had seen while in Kit's body. He hoped he dreamed in color for a while.

Then the world was shades of red, black, and grey.

Remy and Peter were smiling at him, reaching out to clap him on the back.

Kit stood with Emily and the others, and sure enough, Emily was holding a bottle of water and a handful of pills.

Sympathy for Emily twinged in Scott's chest when Kit thanked Emily and ruffled her hair like she was a little sister before he took the pills. Then Storm surged forward to hug him, and Scott was lost in the emotional greetings and welcoming home.

Over Storm's shoulder, Scott saw Schuldig standing stiffly beside the dark-haired man who looked neither bewildered nor timid. Even in the scruffy prisoner's uniform the man stood tall, and Scott noticed that he had bright golden eyes. Schuldig held out a pair of conservative wire-framed glasses, and the man put them on, pushing them up his nose with his index finger. To one side, Dr. McTaggert looked annoyed, and the two telekinetics actually looked afraid.

But then Storm was pulling back and smiling up at him.

"Welcome home, Scott," she said. "Welcome home."

Only Scott noticed Logan slip out from the back of the crowd.

A door clicked shut silently behind him, and he was gone.


	11. Chapter 11

The celebration was bigger than Scott could ever remember the school having, and that was counting all the lovely galas the Professor had held for charities and fundraising. All of the students were released from chores and summer classes early, and there was a feast in the dining hall. Scott's other former students, including Kitty - who had all grown so much - gave him hugs and chattered at him, trying to get him caught up on all he'd missed. The students were wildly enthusiastic that the field leader of the X-men was back; they were oblivious to the tentativeness and hesitation of the other teachers as they interacted with their long-lost comrade.

As far as Scott was concerned, Storm could continue to be the field leader for a long time. This school, this world, this place - it had all gone on without him. He was a relic from a bygone era, it seemed, out of touch with iPods and Blackberries and the oil crisis, the Mutant Cure group and the end of Magneto; Scott was lost in all of it.

Someone with an eclectic dance mix on her iPod took over the stereo system in the den, and suddenly there was a dance party going down. It was strange to see Bobby and Rogue dancing and laughing with no fear, to see Warren dancing slowly with Jubilee, ever mindful of his wings. Once the other teachers were concerned with chaperoning the dancefloor action, Scott took his chance and slipped out of the house.

He wandered out to the back garden to stare at Jean's tombstone, and the Professor's, and the stark slab of granite that had been raised in memory of Scott himself.

He sank down onto a cold stone bench in the midst of the topiary maze and tilted his head back to look at the sky.

Shades of black and red, with twinkling red stars.

If he closed his eyes, he could remember when the sky had been midnight velvet and sparkles of blue, green, yellow overhead.

"You have a very poetic mind for one who is perceived as so mathematical and logical."

Scott straightened up and turned. Schuldig, of course.

How had the other man sneaked up on Scott? Even when he was weak and his reflexes were shot, his awareness of his surroundings were rarely diminished.

Schuldig just grinned, and Scott remembered, belatedly, that Schuldig was a telepath.

"Prodigal son not enjoying his own homecoming party?" Schuldig was smoking a clove cigarette and blowing smoke rings into the air above his head; he had a nebulous halo.

"I was hardly prodigal," Scott said. "I'm sure you know why I stepped out."

"If you weren't broadcasting so loud, I would suggest you were avoiding your Logan friend."

Scott arched an eyebrow. "The way you're avoiding Dr. McTaggert and her telekinetics?"

"Those two children are of no concern," Schuldig said, and he grinned around the cigarette.

"Just who was it that you rescued, that you had to kiss him before he got his body back? And how did you restore that body without the other body in the switch pairing?" Scott turned more fully toward Schuldig. "Why did you switch us at all?"

The rapid-fire questions caused the other man to laugh. "So that's the famous interrogation technique of the fierce field leader Cyclops?"

Scott glared from behind his glasses, and he missed the effectiveness his glares had when people could see them.

Schuldig laughed again; of course, he could sense Scott's animosity.

"That man was no one you know and no one you'll ever see again. As for how I restored him - the body his soul was in was especially strong and could take the strain of a long-distance transfer. As for why I switched you at all - I had to see if a psyche transfer was equally effective in the nearly-dead and the supernaturally healthy."

Scott remembered the pained expression Schuldig had worn just before the transfer.

"You experimented with us to make sure he would survive."

Schuldig blew out a mouthful of smoke. "Can you blame me?"

"Do you love him?"

"Not that he'll ever care."

"Then not really, no, I don't blame you." A wry smile curved Scott's lips, and he ached, for one moment, for the flavor of Schuldig's cigarette. "After all, your bid to save your stranger brought me back to life."

Schuldig lifted one shoulder in a shrug, clearly uncomfortable at the gratitude. "Some other telepath would have found you eventually. Whoever stuck you in that bubble was damned strong - stronger than Nagi, and that's saying something."

"I'm glad someone stronger than an omega-level talent is _something_."

Schuldig and Scott both turned at the voice. A boy, slight in figure, stood beside them. He wore a Japanese school uniform and had a pair of bright violet eyes that were at strong odds with the rest of his clearly Japanese features; they must have really been blue. Behind the boy loomed a pale, ghostly figure of a man with pink (probably really white) hair and a stark black eyepatch.

"Nagi, Farfarello." Schuldig rose up. "Is it time to go, then?"

"Crawford-san is thanking Dr. McTaggert. We will leave as soon as the formalities are ended," Nagi said.

Farfarello said, "Even a blinded cyclops could run down a wolverine on a full moon night."

Schuldig blinked at the non-sequitur, then shrugged it off and took another drag off his cigarette. To Scott he said, "Farf's a little nutty." Then his expression turned sly and he added, "But he often notices that which the rest of us don't - or won't - that ends up being critical to our situation."

Scott nodded up at Farfarello. "Thank you for the...sentiment, but as your friend noted, there are some things that people refuse to notice."

"We're not friends," Farfarello said. "Just teammates."

Nagi wrinkled his nose at the scent of Schuldig's cigarette. "Come on - we should head for the car. I packed one of Crawford-san's white suits just like he said to."

"'Like he said to'?" Schuldig echoed, following Nagi and Farfarello back toward the house.

"Of course. Crawford-san saw his rescue. It was inevitable." Nagi's expression was politely neutral, but when he glanced over his shoulder at his older teammate Scott thought he saw a hint of mirth in those violet eyes.

Schuldig broke into a rapid protest in fluent German, to which Farfarello responded in kind. Scott watched them go and had the sudden urge to call Schuldig back, ask for more. Then he shook his head clear of the notion and tipped his head back to watch the stars some more.

"It's not a full moon night. And a sickly guy like you - it would be rude to make you run me down."

Logan stepped out of the shadow of some nearby trees.

"You're not inside enjoying the party?"

"I was gone for a week, not dead for a year. It's not me they miss." Logan came to stand beside the stone bench.

Scott didn't look at him.

"Emily and the others are leaving tomorrow - Storm is letting them stay the night in the guest wing," Logan said.

The Logan Scott remembered would have considered that a useless piece of information and not bothered to relay it.

"I owe them my life," Scott said. He glanced back toward the house. Golden light, warm against the darkness, spilled from the windows. Hazy silhouettes danced to the pulsing beat of the music.

"Gonna go say thank you? I always thought the Professor's little boy scout was polite." Logan crossed his arms over his chest and smirked.

"I will thank them before they leave." Scott traced the Big Dipper to the North Star. If only life were as easy as looking at the right star all the time. In his examination of the night sky he was oblivious to the growing tension that hovered in the silence until Logan broke it.

"So we're back to this then, are we? Sniping like a pair of regency heroines?" He growled. "I've had enough of your polite poison for a lifetime, Cyke. What's it gonna be?"

Scott blinked, startled out of his perusal, and turned to Logan. "What's what going to be?" As soon as he said it he realized that he sounded as if he were being deliberately obtuse, but the anger was already etched in Logan's features and Scott had no room to protest. He didn't want to have this conversation.

Ever.

He stood up and moved to push past Logan, but the other man caught him by the shoulder and spun him around so they were face-to-face.

"I knew you could be an idiot, but I didn't think the almighty Scott Summers had it in him to be this dense," Logan growled.

Scott wasn't strong enough to pull away. He knew that if he did, he'd overbalance, and Logan would let him fall. He didn't want to have to spend any more time in the infirmary than necessary - and he didn't want Storm yelling at him.

So he said, "I'm not being dense. I'm being deliberate. I told you _no_ , and I stand by my decision."

"No to what?" Challenge glinted in those dark eyes.

"No to everything." Scott's voice was firm, unfazed, even though he desperately wanted to flee.

Logan studied Scott's face for a long moment. "I was right. I do miss your blue eyes." And he stepped around Scott and walked away.

***

The next morning the students, tired from partying and having fun, reluctantly surrendered themselves back to their classes. Some of the younger students peered curiously at Emily and her friends as they sat at a table with Logan and Scott, eating breakfast.

"So yeah, we're going back to New York City to see Tim's play," Jeremy said. "I figure - well, we made the trip out here, so we ought to make it worth our while."

"And since I got both of you off work for a few more days yet, you want to enjoy yourselves. Dirty slackers," Emily said. She flashed Jeremy a cheeky smile.

He laughed and ruffled her hair. "Holy crap, I've never been so glad that you're as paranoid and OCD about knowing about us as you are."

"You're glad about that?" Kit asked.

"I am," Scott said. "She had talked to me for nearly ten minutes before she tried to stab me with the flowers in her hair."

Jeremy choked. "Flowers in her hair?"

Emily just smiled serenely and ate more of her cereal.

"I hope everything works out for you two," Dakota said, darting a look between Logan and Scott and then averting her gaze before Logan caught her.

Mary nodded her agreement and looked as if she were about to say something, but then she held up her fork in a "pause" gesture and hurriedly swallowed her food. "Yeah. And if you're ever out by Cedarville and need something, you know how to look us up."

"Thanks," Scott said. "There's really good hiking and outdoor recreation out there, isn't there?"

Dakota nodded. "Yeah - we've got national parks galore."

"Maybe when I take some of the older students on survival training field trips we'll come your way." Scott managed a small smile and ignored the way Logan kept staring at Kit whenever the other boy was checking his surroundings. He checked his surroundings quite frequently; perhaps he was even more paranoid than Emily.

Once Kit caught Logan staring and he stared back a moment, expression challenging, before he turned away and leaned across the table to steal the syrup from Jeremy.

"That's awesome!" Mary said. "If you wanted, you could crash at our apartment and everything."

"We promise it won't be in the aftermath of Jeremy's twenty-first birthday party, too," Dakota said.

"Hey," Jeremy said suddenly, "how the hell did you manage a road trip without Gina and Alexis tagging along?"

All three girls dropped their gazes and twisted in their seats uncomfortably.

Kit's eyebrows went up. "Was it that bad?"

"Well...Emily made bangers and mash and put sleeping pills in Alexis's mash, and then we told Gina that Kevin was looking for her, so she ran off to his house and - we just bolted," Dakota said. "It was all Emily's idea!"

"I did it for a reason," Emily said, lifting her chin and squaring her shoulders. "There's no way Gina would have coped if she found out what had happened to the four of you, and Alexis's utter skepticism would have slowed us down. So I did what I had to."

"Very mercenary of you," Scott said.

"I approve," Logan added.

They finished breakfast with easy conversation, and then Logan headed off to change into his uniform and run simulations in the Danger Room - though he told the college students none of this.

Emily was the first to push her plate away and rise to her feet. "I'll go thank Ms. Munroe for saving us a night of sleeping in the van. Kit, Jeremy, get the van prepped, all right? Dakota, Mary, make sure we have all our gear."

The two girls nodded, and Emily walked away. Scott watched her go and thought that, if she had been a mutant, she would have made an excellent field leader for the X-Men.

"Take care of yourselves," Dakota said. She reached out and shook Scott's hand, then hurried off to do Emily's bidding.

Mary waited till Dakota was out of earshot before she spoke. "It was interesting, getting to know you. I promise not to tell Kit and Jeremy what you and Logan got up to while in their bodies." Then she smiled faintly and said, "Whatever happens, I hope both of you end up happy."

Scott watched her go and wondered how he could ever be happy with Logan.

* * *

If Storm had had her way - and she usually did - Scott would have been back in his old bedroom (too large and too empty without Jean's things) being pampered and fussed over by all of his female students and Hank. Safe behind the shield of his glasses and the newly rebuilt shields in his mind, Scott managed to reassert some of his old Cyclops authority and insisted that, if he was going to loaf around in bed all day, he ought to start picking up his share of work, so he had a pile of student files to read and the quarterly reports about the school's progress and finances.

As it turned out, Warren had taken over teaching Scott's math classes. Even though Warren wasn't entirely cut out for the complexities of trig and calculus, he had had enough business and accounting classes that he could help the students keep their numbers straight without driving them up the wall the way Hank did. Hank had a better grasp of the math Scott taught, but Hank's genius made it difficult for him to understand that mutants were still teenagers and they just didn't get it like he did.

Kitty, Bobby, and several of the other older students had expressed their relief that Scott was back and would be teaching math. He had a feeling that if he had only been gone a week their appreciation of mathematics wouldn't be quite so improved.

Still, he wanted to teach again. Reading student files, helping with finances - he would be assistant headmaster, just as he had been before.

Kitty and Rogue had gone into town to pick out a new desktop and laptop for Scott so he could do his work, and he sat up in his bed, slowly rebuilding his work from years past - lesson plans, student observation files, X-Men logistics.

Scott stared down at the file in front of him and realized that he'd been reading the same paragraph for twenty minutes.

Maybe he needed to get out.

He put the laptop into hibernate, set it aside, and rose to his feet. As long as he didn't go charging down to the Danger Room to run simulations with Remy and Peter, Storm had no reason to yell at him.

He headed down to the kitchen for a glass of juice and wondered what he ought to do with the rest of his day. Remy had taken over his shop class and Hank was handling Blackbird repairs now.

Scott stared down at his glass of water, at the translucent red liquid, and closed his eyes. If he concentrated hard, he could bring back that memory of Emily in her saree, of all the vibrant colors, the shimmer of the fabric, the henna on her forehead, the golden bracelets jangling at her wrists. He smiled faintly to himself. Emily emailed him faithfully, telling him how Kit and Jeremy and the others were getting along and inquiring after him, making sure he was getting better. Her friendliness had eased some of the awkwardness of being back in a place that looked just like his home but wasn't.

He had moved out of his old room as soon as possible, claiming that it was too big for just one person. Now he was in a smaller room in the teachers' wing, and it was a little less lonely, the way he could fill the room by himself.

Life had gone on without him. Remy and Warren had taken to racing on the weekends - Remy's bike versus Warren's collection of sports cars, and they laughed about their challenges over breakfast on Monday morning. Storm and Hank definitely had something going on; Scott could see it in their smiles and the little glances they sneaked at each other during conversations. New relationships had been forged, and Scott was outside of them all. He didn't catch the inside jokes, and he didn't understand the social politics of the students anymore, not even of the students he had taught before.

And there was something in their eyes - Kitty, Bobby, Rogue - that spoke of deep-buried hurt. Hurt that Scott had avoided because he'd been killed by the Phoenix. Hurt that the Phoenix - in Jean's body - had caused.

Not for the first time, Scott wondered if maybe he ought to leave, take some time off to process that he was back from the dead. Living in someone else's body for a week, essentially in combat crisis mode the entire time, hadn't resolved a thing.  
In fact, it rather made things worse.

Scott felt the ghost of Logan's lips on his and took another sip of water.

"The Storm Queen won't be happy that her poor widdle patient is out of bed."  
The deep drawl was infused with amusement and something that might have been bitterness.

Scott drained his glass of water so he wouldn't be tempted to fling its contents at the other man and then spoke without turning.

"I'm not an invalid."

"You look like a concentration camp escapee."

"It's hardly that bad," Scott said, and he could see a warped version of Logan's reflection in the shiny chrome surface of the refrigerator. "And I'm not the one who suffered it."

"You're suffering for it now."

Scott wanted to say that it was nothing, that he'd survived much worse, a blind, homeless teenager roaming the streets from Omaha to New York, but no one needed to know that. "Did you want something?"

It was the wrong question to ask.

The kitchen door banged shut and suddenly Logan was pressed up against Scott's back, his presence heated and insistent.

"I thought you'd never ask, Slim." His voice in Scott's ear sent shivers down Scott's spine, and he cursed his automatic reaction to the sensation, because Logan laughed softly.

"That's not what I meant and you know it." Scott attempted to twist away from the counter and head for the door, but Logan caught him and pinned him.

"You can't just push it aside and let it go," Logan said, voice low, warm breath caressing Scott's jaw when he turned his face away. "Life doesn't work that way, even when you come back from the dead."

"I didn't take anything from you, so there's nothing to let go of," Scott said. His defiant tone didn't have quite the impact it could have when he was trapped between Logan and the counter like this, a butterfly in a spider's web.

"I could always give you something." The teasing was gone from Logan's voice, and Scott's heart missed a beat.

"I'd rather you didn't."

"Scott," Logan said, and Scott closed his eyes behind his glasses. It was the first time he'd heard his name uttered like this in Logan's real voice, and the effect was stunning. Logan leaned in closer, and Scott was hyperaware of the heat of Logan's body against his, and when he inhaled he was awash in that scent, that Logan-scent that hadn't gone away even when he was in Jeremy's body.

Scott opened his mouth to say don't, or maybe he had opened his mouth for the inevitable kiss, because as soon as Logan's lips were on his and Logan's tongue was in his mouth Scott surrendered with a soft moan.

One arm snaked around his waist, and a hand buried itself in his hair, and Scott's blood was heating up. He arched up against Logan and moaned again, and received an answering moan.

"Scott." Again, his name in that voice. Teeth nipped at his ear, at his collarbone. Nimble fingers worked at the buttons of his shirt, danced over bare skin.  
Scott tried to speak, but sensation made him incoherent.

"Come on, Scott, let it go." Fingertips brushed the hem of his jeans and jolted him back into awareness.

They were in the middle of the kitchen in broad daylight and -

Scott heaved Logan back, darted around him, and fled.

***

Teaching math again was an excellent excuse for Scott to lock himself in his office for hours on end - ostensibly grading homework - and to spend lots of time catching up on school affairs with Storm. If he worked, he had an excuse to be anti-social. No time to hang out with Remy and Warren at the bar, no time to watch the Discovery Channel with Hank in the den, no time to get caught alone and kissed senseless by Logan.  
Scott finished answering a question for Rebecca, a new student who was a sweet, shy empath and probably had a crush on him, and then he returned to packing up his gear. As much as he experienced a brief rush of schadenfreude whenever he unleashed a pop quiz on his students, the grief of grading the things afterward made him question his decision. He swept the papers into a neat pile, checked to make sure he had the attendance sheet, and stepped out of the classroom.

And into Logan's arms.

"You can't avoid me forever," he said.

"Excuse me. I have quizzes to grade," Scott said, staring past Logan's head to a spot on the far wall.

"We haven't talked about this."

"And we won't. Step aside, Wolverine."

Logan's eyes narrowed, and he leaned in, his body thrumming with aggression. "What is it, Slim? Am I not good enough for Professor Xavier's golden boy? Not pure enough, not honorable enough, not smart enough --"

"I refuse to argue with you. Step aside." Scott kept his voice perfectly level, reining in his emotions tightly. Something in him ached to lean into Logan in return and lose himself in the solid heat of the man, lose himself to the abandon of Logan's passion.

Logan was passionate. Scott knew that firsthand.

But he wouldn't give in. Couldn't. He was little Scotty Summers who had loved Jean Grey all his life and was incomplete without her and he didn't have a heart to give to anyone else, and if he got his heart back he was keeping it, because it hurt without it.

Everything hurt.

Except those kisses.

The aggression in Logan's eyes turned to something else, something that twisted in Scott's chest.

"Do you think I don't love you?"

The word caught Scott between the eyes, and he couldn't speak.

"Do you think all I want is this --" Logan dragged a hand down Scott's hip, fingers gripping possessively -- "when I could have this?" And he laid a hand over Scott's chest, right over his beating heart, the gesture utterly gentle, and Logan's hand was shaking then. He was afraid - but the Wolverine was never afraid.

Scott's breath hitched. He wanted to say yes, yes to everything Logan wanted.

He had to say no.

He had to say _something._

 

"Tell me you don't give a damn about me."

Logan's voice was low and urgent.

Scott lifted his head, pole-axed by the sudden change in the conversation.

"Tell me to go and I'll go - you'll never see me again."

Logan could probably do it, too.

"Say the word, Scott, and it's done."

No, Scott realized. You don't have to go. I do.

"Tell me, and I'll go."

Scott lifted his head and looked at Logan, looked him in the eye for the first time during the entire conversation, and he knew Logan was looking back at him.

Scott leaned forward, wondering if he should kiss Logan one last time.

Then he stepped around Logan and walked away.


	12. =

Scott didn't pack anything, just shrugged on an old leather jacket, climbed onto his motorcycle, and roared out into the night. Before, he would have felt a telepathic brush of concern, Jean or the Professor, but tonight there was nothing and no one. He was alone on the streets, and he liked it. He rode for he didn't know how long, away from the city, away from New York, along a maze of streets and highways that his innate mutant sense of direction knew but that he refused to care about, and when his legs were finally numb he pulled over at a roadside Denny's. He could dope up on coffee and then ride on till he was exhausted.

The waitress blinked at his dark red shades when he tugged off his helmet, but smiled tiredly and led him to a table anyway.

Scott plopped down in the booth and ordered some coffee. As soon as the waitress was gone he turned to stare out the window, back along the black expanse of highway he'd covered. He knew he was being irrational, irresponsible, that he'd just shafted Storm again after she had become used to his help in running the school. He was being a coward and so many other things he didn't want to think about, but he couldn't give in to Logan. The only thing he could do was run away.

"Fancy seeing you here, stranger."

Scott jerked and spun, one hand going to the side of his shades, and he saw Schuldig standing over him, a vision in red and brown. Or perhaps the man was wearing a white suit that looked red, and some dark coat of another color that looked brown with the shades. Green, maybe?

Scott missed color.

"Where's the rest of your gang?" Scott asked.

Schuldig arched an eyebrow and slid into opposite side of the booth. "Where's yours?"

"At school. Where they're supposed to be."

Schuldig reached into his jacket for a pack of cigarettes, spotted the no-smoking sign, glared at it, and put the pack away again. "Being where you're supposed to be is no fun at all."

"Which is why you're here in the middle of the night, then?" Scott thanked the waitress for the coffee and proceeded to load up the mug with sugar. Usually he took the stuff black, but right now he needed an energy spike.

The waitress asked Schuldig if he wanted anything, and he asked for coffee as well.

"I'm here because I can be." But there was an edge to his voice that wasn't as amused as he perhaps would have liked to sound.

Scott drank his coffee slowly, savoring the warmth.

"That creature is in love with you, you know," Schuldig said suddenly.

Only Scott's reflexes prevented him from choking on his drink.

Schuldig turned his gaze on Scott, eyes piercing, and he was looking into Scott's mind as much as he was looking into Scott's eyes.

"His mind was - " Schuldig shuddered delicately - "frightening, how deep and yet how empty it seemed. But whatever he is, whatever he can do, he's in love with you. The emotion was...starkly human."

Scott set down his mug and dragged his hands into his lap so Schuldig couldn't see them shake.

"I --"

"Don't care if he loves you? That's quite the lie. You care enough that it sent you running."

"I'd say 'stay out of my mind', but that wouldn't work." Scott's mouth was set in a thin line.

The corner of Schuldig's mouth curved up. "It took you one conversation to learn what my team still hasn't learned in six years of partnership."

Scott drank some more coffee.

Schuldig flashed the waitress an unsettling smile and accepted the steaming cup of coffee. Then he slurped it like he was five years old, and Scott was amazed at his own patience. Why he hadn't just walked away from Schuldig - who was, at the very least, some sort of cause of his situation - he didn't know.

Schuldig must have caught the stray thought, and he grinned. "Hey, just because I switched your bodies doesn't mean I made you --"

"I know," Scott said, voice sharper than he'd intended.

Something glittered in Schuldig's eyes, dangerous, like the edge of a knife. "No, you don't. At least he loves you. Do you know what it's like, being with a man day in and day out for your entire existence, working beside him, trusting your life to him, and knowing all you are to him is a weapon?"

Scott recoiled, startled by the vehemence in the Schuldig's voice.

Schuldig leaned forward, voice low and vicious. "You're throwing it away, and you're damned stupid for doing so. If he loves you, take it, because it might be all you ever get."

Schuldig was wrong. Scott had already had all he'd ever get, and now Jean was  
dead.

" _Nein_ ," Schuldig hissed. " _You're_ wrong. He loves you, dammit, and you should march back there and tell him you give in, you're willing to take what he's offering, because - damn you - it's all that cliché beautiful once in a lifetime nonsense that you'll probably never get again. I'd kill for what he's offering you. Hell, I _have_ killed for it."

"Mastermind, it's time to go."

Schuldig jerked back guiltily. Scott turned and saw a familiar man standing over him. He knew that man, knew the black hair and cold eyes, the menacing glint off of glasses.

" _Mochiron_." Schuldig knocked back the rest of his coffee like it was hard liquor and pushed himself to his feet, but the other man was already walking away. Anguish flashed across Schuldig's face before it vanished behind his infuriating smirk, and he tucked his hands into his jacket pockets, sauntering after the other man. Before he stepped out, he glanced over his shoulder and caught Scott's gaze.

_Go back. I just might kill you if you don't._

Scott might have been unnerved by the threat if he hadn't sensed the exhaustion at the edges of the other man's mind. He thought about it and almost nodded, but Schuldig swept out of the restaurant and into the night.

Scott watched him follow the other man across the parking lot. Then he studied the highway he'd driven on and wondered if he had the energy to make the return trip. He flagged down the waitress and asked for more coffee.

***

Scott was back at the school by lunch. The students said nothing, because they probably hadn't noticed anything amiss by Warren or Hank taking over a few math classes. Scott could feel the weighty stares from Storm and the other teachers. He knew he looked terrible, that his eyes were probably bloodshot, that he hadn't shaved looked several different shades of un-Cyclops scruffy, post-Jean scruffy, and he really did want a shower.

He caught Storm's grim expression and nodded his acknowledgment; he would speak to her as soon as he was done showering and otherwise washing up.

The warm water took the edge off of the cold that had settled into Scott's bones sometime after Denny's and before the dawn, a cold that not even the sun had warmed. He shaved blind in the shower - an old habit he didn't think he would ever break - and when he stepped out of the shower the warm steam followed. The warmth lingered on his skin, and he dressed quickly before it dissipated and cold settled in once more.

Scott pulled on his shades, sighing at the weight of them - would he ever get used to it again? - and combed his hair absently.

Someone knocked on door. It was probably Storm.

"Come in," Scott said.

The door swung open, and Logan loomed in the doorway.

"You didn't tell me to leave," he said.

Scott opened his mouth for a scathing retort, and then he remembered that look in Schuldig's eyes.

"I'd rather not discuss this with the door open."

Logan stepped into the room, expression wary, and closed the door softly behind him.

"You're willing to talk." It was half a question.

"Not really, but - I'm attempting to be civil."

Logan snorted. "I don't want you _civil_ , I want you --"

"I know you do." Scott lifted his chin defiantly. "I know what you want."

"And are you willing to give it?"

Scott's defiance wavered beneath Logan's intense stare, and he looked away. "I - I don't know."

Another impatient noise. Logan tossed his head. "To hell with that. Either you will or you won't."

Scott shook his head again. "I don't - I don't know anything right now, all right?"

Logan stepped closer. "Stop pussy-footing around, Slim. You have answers swirling in that pretty little head of yours. You took off last night, and now you're back. You know something. You're just not willing to share."

Scott remained in the doorway to the bathroom, contemplating what to do next. Logan was wrong. He really had no idea what he was doing.

"Was that your answer, then? You wouldn't ask me to leave - the school needs me - so you'd leave instead, knowing the school doesn't need you? I'd forgotten how disgustingly noble and self-sacrificing you were." The words weren't nearly as venomous as they could have been.

"I'm not self-sacrificing --"

"Then do it. Tell me to leave. Assert what you want."

Scott said nothing.

Logan advanced. "One last time - tell me to go, and I'm gone, vanished off the face of your pathetic little world, and you'll never know I even existed."

Scott bit his lip. He had to say something.

Broken-hearted green eyes danced in his mind, mocking, pleading.

"Tell me," Logan said.

Scott kissed him.

Logan let out a surprised noise at being half-body slammed, but the noise was muffled by the kiss. Scott arched against him desperately, clinging tightly, using his mouth to speak when he had no words to say. Logan reached up, hands tentative, stroking Scott's back, twining in his hair, touching as if unsure the man in his arms was real.

Scott wrapped his arms around Logan's neck and kissed him deeply, open-mouthed, flicking the tip of his tongue against Logan's and earning a moan.

"Hey," Logan gasped out, pulling back for breath.

Scott's mouth fastened on the sensitive spot behind Logan's jaw, and his words vanished.

"Hey," Logan managed again a moment later. "Scott, wait -- breathe." He tugged Scott back far enough for Scott to set to panting.

"What?" Scott tried to lean in again. "Isn't this what you wanted?"

Something in Scott's voice must have set Logan off, and the haze of lust in his eyes cleared slightly. He pulled back further, brow furrowed.

"That isn't _all_ I want."

"What else do you want, then?" Scott couldn't say that he wasn't sure he had anything left to give.

Logan leaned in this time and kissed Scott slowly, gently. When he pulled back, Scott was shaking, fine tremors that rocked his entire frame.

"Logan --"

Logan reached up and tugged on Scott's glasses.

His heart stopped. He squeezed his eyes shut automatically, moving to turn his face away and duck, but Logan stilled him. Scott held still, chest rising in falling with rapid, shallow breaths, as Logan slid Scott's glasses off his face and set them aside.

Scott swallowed hard. He was blind. He'd just let someone render him helpless. He couldn't do this. He had to fix himself up and walk away and --

That mouth was on his again, as soft as the brush of a moth's wings. He kissed back, still shaking, fighting the urge to turn away and bury his face in his hands. Logan pulled away, and Scott stood very still as Logan traced the line of his brow, fingertips brushing the delicate skin of his eyelids, sketching the contours of a face no one saw whole.

"Do you trust me?" Logan asked.

"I'm not him," Scott said, voice muted. He bowed his head so Logan wouldn't see his face. "You - you'll never see my eyes again."

"I never said it was him I wanted."

"You didn't want me until I was him." That was the crux of it, Scott realized. Why he couldn't let himself believe the things Logan said to him even though he wanted to so desperately.

Again with a delicate brush of fingertips over his eyelids. Scott shivered. He might as well have been stripped bare of all his clothes for how vulnerable he felt.

"It wasn't his body that mattered," Logan said.

"It wasn't until I was in his body --"

"That I even knew you were alive." A whisper-light kiss at Logan's temple. "It was never his body I wanted, you damned fool." Logan leaned in, overwhelming Scott with his scent and heat and sheer presence.

Scott groped at thin air, caught Logan, steadied himself.

Logan's breath, warm and arousing, curled across Scott's ear. "I wanted your heart and your soul."

Scott bit his lip hard. "Logan, I --"

"Do you trust me?"

Scott caught Logan's wrist, stumbled backward, and tumbled gracelessly onto the bed, tugging Logan after him.

He dragged Logan up for a kiss.

Logan obliged him, mouth meeting mouth.

Scott was dexterous even when blind, and the buttons on Logan's shirt were hardly a challenge. Logan didn't break the kiss as he fumbled to help Scott along and only ended up getting in the way, causing Scott to chuckle softly as he pulled away for air.

"And they say I'm the blind one," Scott murmured. He traced the warm, smooth skin of Logan's chest, skimming the shirt off of Logan's shoulders and letting the man shrug it off the rest of the way.

"I'm - a little distracted," Logan grunted.

"Let me help, then," Scott said, and deftly loosened Logan's belt.

They fell into a rhythm after that, a symphony of questing hands and daring mouths until they were a tangle of golden limbs and soft cries of ecstasy into the warm sunlight of the afternoon.

***

Scott awoke before Logan. He'd had practice, sneaking out of bed without disturbing Jean - which was a feat, given that she'd been a telepath - but it was a bit more complicated when he had to inch his way around the room in search of his glasses.

He slid them on and blinked. The world outside the window was dark. A glance at the alarm clock on the night stand told him that he and Logan had missed supper.  
Scott dressed himself in the clothes he'd hastily discarded hours before and ran his fingers through his hair to arrange it in some semblance of neatness. Hank would know as soon as he ran into Scott, but that didn't mean Scott wanted the students to know just yet.

Scott glanced back at the bed where Logan lay, calm and asleep. Scott wished that some of the bruises he'd made a good attempt at leaving would have stayed, but he knew it was probably better that way, that no one saw Scott's marks of possessiveness.

His stomach rumbled, then, and reminded him why he'd risen.

He glanced back at Logan once more and supposed it wouldn't be two hard to scrounge up leftovers for two.

Before he left the room, Scott scrawled a hasty note on a scrap of paper he'd been using as a bookmark and set it on the empty pillow beside Logan's hand.

When Logan woke, he would see one word that conveyed all Scott could want to say.

_Stay._


End file.
